Overview
In What's Going On, Nathan McCall firmly establishes himself as a commentator for our times, drawing on personal experience and current events to deconstruct the social, cultural, and political tensions that, in clearly seen and not so obvious ways, affect us every day. In the chapter "Gangstas, Guns, Shoot-'Em-Ups," he advances the debate over violent rap lyrics with powerful firsthand evidence of the harm macho pop culture does to young minds. In "The Revolution Is About Basketball" he shows how the stereotype of blacks' sports supremacy makes a casual game between blacks and whites turn gravely serious. "Old Town" looks at the racial unfairness present in the gentrification of historic African-American neighborhoods. Whether discussing the cultural significance of Muhammad Ali, defending Alice Walker and Terry McMillan from black critics, or illuminating the strained position of the black middle class, Nathan McCall is always straight-shooting and provocative.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
McCall (Makes Me Wanna Holler) here offers essays on contemporary racial issues, warning at the outset about "the incompetence of white leadership" and blacks' failure to respond when "we're victimized by one another." In conversational tone, he starts with hard-hitting pieces on how basketball mythology warps both black and white America's view of black men and how the black community must confront gangsta rap, which he sees as a product of what a friend of his terms "internalized oppression and pathology" and a testament to a highly violent world. Then the momentum slows. Some essays seem reworked feature storiesreports on the attempt of Alexandria, Va., to move out poor people and the conflicts among middle-class blacks living in Prince George County, Md. McCall offers vignettes of interaction with whites: a baby free of race fear, an elevator ride full of it. He closes with pieces on Muhammad Ali, the failures of the white Christian church and a moving piece on the death of a former "homeboy," a criminal mourned by his victim's mother, a black woman with "unflagging belief in redemption." Author tour. (Oct.)Library Journal
McCall, who has been to prison, journalism school, the Washington Post, and the best sellers lists (Makes Me Wanna Holler, LJ 1/94), is back with essays ranging from the dangers of rap to the politics of gun control.Kirkus Reviews
McCall follows up his critically acclaimed autobiography Makes Me Wanna Holler (1994) with this eye-opening collection of personal essays on race and racism in America.One of the principal themes that crops up here, in tones that range from levity to gravity, is that of childhood and parenthood. In the essay entitled "The Problem with Babies," a white toddler who tries to engage McCall in play in a fast-food restaurant is depicted as a sort of adorable predator; the child's ignorance of racial tension between his mother and McCall leads to the conclusion that babies "don't give a damn about the racial boundaries that grown-ups impose." In other pieces, McCall meditates on his son, as he condemns both whites and blacks for the intraracial violence that he states, in no uncertain terms, is destroying the African-American community; he writes of his daughter in an essay in which he confesses to having committed sexual assaults on several women as a young man, not realizing that he wasn't entitled to their favors by virtue of his being male. It is this surprisingly and often disarmingly confessional tone that brings cohesion to these essays. McCall knows his own faults and those of the very community that he defends and of which he is part; he can be slow to admit that those faults include poor family structure and upbringing. He is far quicker to finger white racism as a cause for black suffering, but his strong defense lies in his own experiences. While McCall is reluctant to divorce himself from acceptance of Louis Farrakhan, it is his essay on Muhammad Ali that better depicts a black dissenter as a model human being.
Despite some flaws, this is a strong effort from the journalist turned essayist.