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Chasing America: Notes from a Rock 'n' Soul Integrationist, by Dennis Watlington
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"And I thought I knew this crazy-brave black boy who bolted out of a Harlem ghetto into a white prep school and bobbed and weaved his way across the treacherous divide between black and white America. But Dennis Watlington's life story is even more astonishing than I knew. He emerges a no-jive black integrationist who is proud of the slave ancestry that makes him a solid American foreperson." -Gail Sheehy, bestselling author of Passages and Understanding Men's Passages
Chasing America is a rollercoaster ride through promise and poverty, affirmative action and addiction, and a powerful story that captures a life and an era that is seminally American.
Born in Harlem in 1952, Dennis developed a heroin habit at the age of 14, kicked it, and received a scholarship to the Hotchkiss School where he was elected president of his class. He went on to NYU, became involved in film and theater (he had a small role in The Deerhunter and gave Bruce Willis his start in a play called Bullpen), got addicted to crack, kicked that, and became an Emmy winning television writer.
Chasing America shows us the best and worst that America offers to a Black man--from the Jim Crow South to boarding school life in New England to backstage at the Fillmore East to a holding cell in Bellevue Hospital.
Part Ellison, part Exley, Chasing America is an amazing story.
- Sales Rank: #1412263 in Books
- Published on: 2006-01-24
- Released on: 2006-01-24
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.53" h x 1.32" w x 6.35" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 384 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Watlington was a poor African-American boy in LBJ-era New York City whose intellectual acuity landed him scholarships to several prestigious prep school programs as the "token Negro," including the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut. But the street lured him back; he became addicted to heroin at 13, was in gangs at 15 and incarcerated at 17. Later he was tempted by alcohol and crack cocaine. Watlington's healing came through acting, teaching and knowing the right women: his first wife, African-American actress Gerri Griffin; their daughter, Avery; his Caucasian wife of the past two decades, Anne; the Oscar-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple; and his lifelong friend, Gail Sheehy, who'd written about him when he was at Hotchkiss. Watlington views his childhood, adolescence and rise as a television writer and screenwriter through the scrim of racism. His tale is remarkable, if incomplete (his father and siblings are rarely mentioned, his mother appears only as a vicious harridan, he never explains why he chooses drugs and crime, he glosses over his successes), and the overabundance of colloquial slang and the excessive use of "nigger" make for hard going. Nevertheless, it's a compelling story of one man's struggle to define his place as a black man in white America. (Feb. 15)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From the Back Cover
Dennis Watlington is not your typical Black man. Chasing America is his story of walking the tightrope of American racial politics and finding acceptance always elusive.
"Chasing America is an epic tale of the black experience in late 20th century America. Author Dennis Watlington has seen it all, and makes no excuses for his addictions, petty crimes and squandered opportunities, but the soul-crushing racism that surrounds him speaks for itself as he makes his way from Harlem and the Deep South on into the larger, white-run world. The life he ends up creating--as a husband and father, as a playwright, actor and writer, and as a friend who never forgets the old neighborhood--are a tribute to his innate decency, his sheer talent and his inspiring capacity for self-renewal." -Beth Harpaz, author of Finding Annie Farrell
"Chasing America covers many topics from drug addiction, sex, interracial marriages, racism to redemption. Dennis Watlington's experience is a good example of how God deals with us as individuals." -Armstrong Williams
About the Author
Dennis Watlington has been a junkie, a thief, a motivational speaker, a janitor for the circus, an occupational therapist, a journalist, a soap opera actor, and most recently a screenwriter and documentary filmmaker. His credits include The Untold Story of the Black West which won him an Emmy. He currently lives with his wife Anne in Western Massachusetts.
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
The Odyssey Redux, by a Homer from Harlem
By Thomas H. Pyle
They say a cat has nine lives. This cat, Dennis Watlington, has had many more. Chasing America recounts the raw, riveting odyssey of this angry, able, and ultimately angelic black youth from the depths to the heights, then to the depths, then to the heights again. Watlington's personal evolution embodies so much more than one man's rightful due from the American race revolution.
I remember Dennis. Who could forget him? We crossed paths at Hotchkiss. I was from pathetically suburban Ho-Ho-Kus. He was up--way up--from menacingly urban Harlem. Hotchkiss then was all male, almost all white, and altogether remote from the "real world". It was the '60s, an energetic, earnest time. Although an entrenched part of The Establishment, Hotchkiss wanted to do better. It wanted to integrate. The mandarin trustees of Hotchkiss were in the hunt for how, armed with good intentions.
Thanks to their implausible efforts, into our wide-well, patch-madras world dropped this hulking, seething, throbbing man-boy. As Dennis wonderfully recounts in his book, his enrollment was the brainchild of Hotchkiss Trustee Bill Brokaw, a big-time Wall Street stockbroker from Greenwich. As a reasonably successful product of inner-city youth programs, Dennis somehow caught Brokaw's eye. Brokaw first saw in Dennis what we all came to know in him: presence, depth, daring, determination, charisma, and charm.
Did Brokaw really know what he was getting? We callow schoolboys suspected a dark romantic past. But hardly did we know what Dennis confesses to being before donning the tweed jacket: street hustler, gang member, heroin addict, violent criminal. And there he was at... Hotchkiss? With an even more sinister side-kick, the sly yet soulful late Noel Velasquez! Dennis' description of the chasm between the Innocents in Lakeville and these Vulcans from the cauldron of New York is delicious to read--and remember.
After Hotchkiss (where he was elected Senior Class president!) Dennis went a way we supposed he should. Himself a living art form, he entered the world of arts as a producer, director, and (now) writer. He has done well in all three, as his Emmy award and certainly this book attest. Yet Dennis again descended into Hell, when he became a crack addict, nearly causing him to lose everything--including his iconoclastic wife Ann, the daughter of a hard-bitten Irish American cop (who became fiercely loyal to his unlikely son-in-law).
Characteristically, Dennis dug deep yet again, connecting with old friends and drawing from his formidable reserves to turn himself around. Through his many oscillations he has lived richly, if often raw. From such a life both terrific and treacherous, he learned to embrace and trust the world, and then to come humbly to terms with his own racial conscience.
As he headlines in his book, he has now in his five score years transitioned from black, to gray, to white. But don't be dismayed: this cat ain't now no pathetically suburban white-boy wannabe. Dennis Watlington offers us an authentic voice of a reflective, intelligent, once hateful, now humble fellow life traveler with a well seasoned point of view. He is one of God's rare miracles, for which I give thanks to have been graced to behold.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Bold, Eloquent and Informative
By UniverSouLove
Dennis Watlington's Chasing America: Notes from a Rock 'n' Soul Integrationist is a classic memoir.
In defining and descriptive detail, Dennis Watlington shares his pain, struggles, joys and experiences in a very personable and candid nature.
You're walking with him as he walks the dark, creepy and active streets of Harlem NY during and after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
This memoir raises the bar for such insight and storytelling.
It is a captivating look into the life of an optimist.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
A True Cross-Section of American Society
By B. Williams
While perhaps this is not the most refined of novels, Dennis Watlington is an extremety gifted writer. Without a doubt this novel is not intended to come off as refined; it is merely an honest expression of one man's determination to believe in hope and opportunity in the face of the discrimination and economic hardship associated with racism. In doing so he proves to those around him that he is in fact beneficial to society, however many ups and downs his life takes.
The value of Watlington's story resides inherently in these very ups and downs, because, unlike many rags-to-riches stories, this novel keeps making the traverse from high white society to the drug-riddled ghetto and back again. It is as though Dennis's life massages the brunt of the American social spectrum, whereas many life stories simply cut straight through it.
Perhaps I am overly partial to Dennis and this novel because he also attended my boarding school, but nonetheless this novel should be read by blacks, whites, and hispanics alike. It provides an inspiring perspective on the true definition of the modern American dream, and in this respect rivals the likes of Gatsby and the Grapes of Wrath for its honest and poignant depiction of an era.
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