Makes Me Wanna Holler

Autobiography/African-American Studies ¿Sooner or later, every generation must find its voice. It may be that ours belongs to Nathan McCall, whose memoir is ... a stirring tale of transformation. He is a mesmerizing storyteller.¿ ¿ Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The New Yorker Nathan McCall was a smart kid growing up in a close, protective family in a black working-class neighborhood. Yet by the age of fifteen, McCall was packing a gun and embarking on a criminal career that five years later would land him in prison for armed robbery. In this blistering memoir, McCall chronicles his passage from the street to the prison yard¿and, ultimately,to the newsrooms of the Washington Post, where he is now a respected journalist. His story is at once devastating and inspiring. For even as he recounts his transformation, McCall compels us to recognize that racism is as pervasive in the newsroom as it is in the inner city, where it condemns so many black men to prison, dead-end jobs, or violent deaths. At once an indictment and an elegy, Makes Me Wanna Holler is sure to take its place among the classics of African- American experience. ¿Angry, eloquent, and powerful ... a relentlessly honest book filled with pain, triumph, rage and humor, high and low.¿ ¿Los Angeles Times Book Review