Chasing America: Notes from a Rock 'n' Soul Integrationist

by Dennis Watlington

Book Overview

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.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312271891
• ISBN13: 9780312271893
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 358 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Entertaining and Enlightening

The author of this book conveys his feelings of uncertainty about the world around him in a deft and frank manner. Parts of this book will be shocking to some but the life led by this man turns out to be both heartbreaking and hopeful. Mr Watlington's writing style is a delight adding contrast to the more difficult elements of the book and well placed levity when it is called for the most. Without wanting to sound like a book jacket blurb I found this book both entertaining and enlightening. Diana Mercer is the co-author of Your Divorce Advisor and her company is peace-talks.com [...]

What A Miricle

To read this memoir and to follow the story; to enjoying the quality and creative writing that came with the deliverance of Dennis's memoir is an understatement. His style is unique and only matches the extrodinary person that we were able to experience thru his writing. I love every minute of it and laughed out loud so many times,and wait for his next one to be published. Great Journey of Miricle after Miricle. Christa Jan Ryan [...]

The Odyssey Redux, by a Homer from Harlem

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

Bold, Eloquent and Informative

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.

A True Cross-Section of American Society

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.