Nathan Mccall's Makes Me Wanna Holler: Review

Avni Patel
Book Review: Makes Me Wanna Holler

The story, “Makes Me Wanna Holler,” is about Nathan McCall's childhood in black neighborhood in late 1900's. He portrays his transitioning from naive young men to changing into gangsters or thugs; and how becoming the “baddest” guy was the “coolest” thing in their community. Over the years, McCall finds himself robbing strangers, shooting white people, and fighting rival groups because this was accepted by this community and committing morally wrong actions were considered to be “cool”. There were many reason this was acceptable in his community. It started off due to the unfair treatment that the whites inflicted upon the African American, which resulted in suppressed anger that the blacks showed.

In American culture, respect is gained from their social status, where in his culture or the African American community the respect is gained by beating a rival group or by fear. Respect was like a survival tool in his community. Respect was an important aspect for their daily life because Whites were constantly looking down at them and creating discrimination against them. In order to prove to the White society, and their own African American communities they had to take actions which were justifying their place in the society. McCall mentions about the High School dropout kids, Scoobie D, who would kill innocent people for no reason. This gave him a place in the community as a highly-respected individual. Scoobie D was beating up the students in school cafeteria, which helped him gain respect from the bystanders witnessing the incident. I believe that most kids at that young age were committing these actions not by their own choice, but it was because they were stereotyped as bad people, thugs, criminals, or gangsters. They were feeling pressured to gain respect from their peers and the Whites. There were many reasons they had to go through this such as having limited opportunities to become successful, and I believe that without the judgmental white culture, the African Americans could have been able to better their