SOURCE: "A Furious Man," in The New York Times Book Review, February 27, 1994, pp. 11-12.

[Hochschild is an American writer, critic, and editor. In the following review, he contends that McCall's anger towards racial inequality and prejudice has negatively affected the focus and tone of his autobiography.]

The social crisis in this country's black community is so catastrophic that we listen urgently to any new voice for explanations. Nathan McCall's angry memoir, which takes its name from a song by Marvin Gaye, does not directly offer any. But obliquely it is a chilling commentary on where the problem is usually located: in aging, job-poor inner cities, filled with single mothers and abandoned by the black middle class. For in Portsmouth, Va., Mr. McCall grew up in an intact, stable family with a stepfather who always had a job, in precisely the kind of neighborhood of lawns and single-family homes...