Color of Water and Makes Me Wanna Holler. Compare and contrast the lives of James McBride and Nathan McCall.

Both James McBride, the author of The Color of Water, and Nathan McCall, the author of Makes Me Wanna Holler, are black men who grew up during the sixties and seventies where the average black male had few choices for a good future. Even though these two authors had their skin color in common, they both lead very different lives.

In the first chapter of Makes Me Wanna Holler, "Get Back", the author Nathan McCall describes a beating that he and his friends inflicted on a white teenage male who stumbled into the wrong part of the neighborhood. After the beating he describes how he and his friends all competed for bragging rights about who did the most damage. In the chapter it says that it made him feel good inside. Beating up the white boys, " made me feel like we were beating all white people on behalf of all the black," McCall writes.

Jon Andrew McBride

photo of James Haggin McBride (1814-1864)

McCall Zerboni

By just reading this first chapter you can tell that he is a very angry person who doesn't mind taking it out on other people, especially white males.

The second chapter, "Cavalier Manor", starts off with McCall and his family moving into a new home in a development called Cavalier Manor. A working class neighborhood where active and retired military personnel lived. Since his step-father served in the Navy, they were always moving around and into what McCall described as drab apartments,this was his families first real home. McCall's family consisted of his mother Lenora, his stepfather Bonnie, two older brothers Dwight and Billy. Shortly after moving in to their new home his mother gave birth to his half brother Brian. His maternal grandmother Bampoose and stepbrother Junnie both ended up living with them too. Even though the house that they moved into...