Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - One of our most visceral and important memoirs on race in America, this is the story of Nathan McCall, who began life as a smart kid 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 these pages, McCall chronicles his passage from the street to the prison yard--and, later, to the newsrooms of The Washington Post and ultimately to the faculty of Emory University. His story is at once devastating and inspiring, at once an indictment and an elegy. Makes Me Wanna Holler became an instant classic when it was first published in 1994 and it continues to bear witness to the great troubles--and the great hopes--of our nation.

With a new afterword by the author

Author: Nathan McCall
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Published: 01/31/1995
Pages: 448
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.71lbs
Size: 8.08h x 5.26w x 0.91d
ISBN: 9780679740704

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.9
Point Value: 29
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 12388 / Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America


Review Citation(s):
Booklist 01/01/2001 pg. 979
Publishers Weekly 01/02/1995
Ebony 06/01/2013 pg. 131

About the Author
Nathan McCall grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia. He studied journalism at Norfolk State University after serving three years in prison, and went on to report for the Virginian Pilot-Ledger Star and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution before joining The Washington Post in 1989. He is the author of a memoir, Makes Me Wanna Holler; an essay collection, What's Going On; and a novel, Them. McCall is currently is a senior lecturer in African American Studies at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.