Jon Wolfman’s book challenge #3

 

When I was much younger I read Manchild in the Promised Land. I thought it was important but Claude Brown didn’t speak to me personally. He wasn’t my contemporary. Nathan McCall is my contemporary and also a really good writer. He made it much easier for me to compare our lives and to get an idea of what Black kids my age were growing up with, probably including kids I knew in suburban NY where the money line and the color line overlapped almost completely. I had no clue. They were living in a war zone compared to me and they didn’t have to be really urban (like Claude Brown was) to live in one. He probably gave me a better and more visceral idea of the differences than anyone. I usually stay away from terms like Paradigm Shift but this was one. I’ve read other authors on the subject but none like McCall.

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