I had read excerpts from Nathan McCall’s (1994) powerful book Makes Me Wanna Holler in an earlier more protected life. I had taken an in-service class as a teacher that introduced me to McCall and I thought that I was doing what I could to introduce my predominately white middle class students to multicultural literature. In retrospect I did not find enough ways to effectively spread the conversation about diversity. The study of secondary discourse communities and the difficulties they have of being heard in the primary discourse, especially as it manifest itself in schools, has caused me to reevaluate what I consider successful about my own teaching career.
I read all of McCall’s book on a trip to New York City in 2003 with my teenage daughter. She had never been to New York before and was full of uneasy anticipation. She was anxious to see a Broadway play and was nervous, as I found out later, of viewing ground zero of the tragedy of 9/11. I was full of some of the same uneasy anticipation of viewing the absence of the World Trade Center as well. I had been to the top floor of one building four years before the event with one son and stood at the base with another son just six weeks before the attack. I am not much of a poet, but I attempted to capture the memories I experienced with my children in this poem.
A Gesture to Memories With Children
In August of 1997 I stood at the top of the world with one son by my side.
We looked down, taking the time to look in each direction; measuring the distance, collecting the landmarks.
In August of 2001 I stood at the bottom of the world with a second son by my side.
We looked up, trying to bend backwards to take in its height; avoiding the dizzy uneasiness of that balancing act.
On September 11, 2001 I drove to work as in the early dawn of a Utah mountain morning as NPR guided my way.
As a glimmer of sun crept over the Quirrh mountains, breaking news interrupted my calm.
An airplane had collided into a tower of the World Trade Center, details unknown.
Which one was it?
The one with the observation deck where I looked down with one son.
The one where I stood at the base and looked up with another.
During the day the buildings collapsed and the world changed.
On September 20, 2003 I stood with a daughter at the edge of the largest hole in America.
We gazed through chain linked fencing to watch the tiny trucks continue to excavate, sifting for meaning in the aftermath of death and hate.
Horizontal fencing with memorial plaques of lament, grief, and hate replaced the vertical expanse of glass and concrete.
A Gesture to Memories With Children
In August of 1997 I stood at the top of the world with one son by my side.
We looked down, taking the time to look in each direction; measuring the distance, collecting the landmarks.
In August of 2001 I stood at the bottom of the world with a second son by my side.
We looked up, trying to bend backwards to take in its height; avoiding the dizzy uneasiness of that balancing act.
On September 11, 2001 I drove to work as in the early dawn of a Utah mountain morning as NPR guided my way.
As a glimmer of sun crept over the Quirrh mountains, breaking news interrupted my calm.
An airplane had collided into a tower of the World Trade Center, details unknown.
Which one was it?
The one with the observation deck where I looked down with one son.
The one where I stood at the base and looked up with another.
During the day the buildings collapsed and the world changed.
On September 20, 2003 I stood with a daughter at the edge of the largest hole in America.
We gazed through chain linked fencing to watch the tiny trucks continue to excavate, sifting for meaning in the aftermath of death and hate.
Horizontal fencing with memorial plaques of lament, grief, and hate replaced the vertical expanse of glass and concrete.
As I viewed the site of this horrendous action I was struck by how it has become a symbol, at least for me, of race and culture hate. The lack of tolerance of anyone or any group in the world, let alone the need for acceptance, is terrifying to me.
I carried McCall’s book with me through the Atlanta airport, La Guardia airport, the New York subway, the metro buses, Washington Square Park, and a variety of other places hoping that some one would engage me in conversation. No one did. On the plane ride home I had a small, pleasant conversation with an African American woman just after I finished reading and closed the book. We talked about New York and Atlanta with anonymous references. I was a displaced Westerner voluntarily selecting Georgia as place to do graduate work in Language Education. In part, because I hoped I would have to confront my own tenuous relationship with race and culture, an attempt to test the limits of my own bigotry and ignorance.
I carried McCall’s book with me through the Atlanta airport, La Guardia airport, the New York subway, the metro buses, Washington Square Park, and a variety of other places hoping that some one would engage me in conversation. No one did. On the plane ride home I had a small, pleasant conversation with an African American woman just after I finished reading and closed the book. We talked about New York and Atlanta with anonymous references. I was a displaced Westerner voluntarily selecting Georgia as place to do graduate work in Language Education. In part, because I hoped I would have to confront my own tenuous relationship with race and culture, an attempt to test the limits of my own bigotry and ignorance.
In the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art I sat across from several paintings by Picasso and read McCall’s book. Lead by a portrait of Gertrude Stein, their distorted images watched me as McCall’s narrative unfold. I was reminded that one day, after repeatedly looking at Picasso’s Guernica, I felt like the shattered and ruptured images of tragedy in the painting made sense. I was no closer to understanding or comprehending the violence of hate and war, but I felt like I could begin to understand the pain and the astonishment of the atrocities. While I read McCall’s troubled musing of what it means to be a Black male in the United States the images and experiences are as surreal to me as a Picasso painting. The images are identifiable but distanced and shaded in black, altering the lens of whiteness through which I will always see the world. McCall and I share the same birth year and reading his experiences year by year I am forced to recognize that while he had a range of choices from which to choose, that range was never remotely as large and as free as the range of choices that I had along the way.
McCall paints verbal stories that I have no desire to personally experience. I am content with the vicarious experience of misogynistic behavior, street violence, prison, and rejection due to skin tone. I have no desire to pull the trigger of a gun. I believe him. I feel a measure of his pain and sense a different pain of my own, the pain of not knowing what to do or where to begin. While McCall, as a Black man, says that all of these experiences make him wanna holler, he has retrained and controlled the scream and released a whisper. The whisper penetrates and makes its presence felt. Reading his experience makes me, as a white man, wanna shut up, I wonder if I can whisper back a response that can find mutual ground for growth. Now, in the wake of Treyvon Martin, Freguson, MO, and the Black Lives Matter movement can't I do a bit more than whisper?
What does this post have to do with YA literature? It is Black History Month and I don't want to whisper or shut up. This blog need to celebrate the rich legacy of African American Authors. I want to offer a point power that I used to guide a discussion about including African American Authors in classrooms last year during Black History Month. We can start with YA authors I highlighted--Jacqueline Woodson, Coe Booth, Kekla Magoon, Kwame Alexander, Sharon Draper, Sharon Flake, Jason Reynolds, Christopher Paul Curtis, and Walter Dean Myers. Of course, there are many more. Who are you discussing this month? Don't stop with these; adolescents can read adult texts as well. I included--Malcolm X, Nathan McCall, Eldridge Cleaver, Shirley Chisholm, Colin Powell, and Barack Obama. Feel free to use and adapt the power point in any manner that suits your needs. It is amazing to me how much I should add to even the discussion of these YA authors after a single year.
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