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Walls: Essays, 1985-1990
Walls: Essays, 1985-1990, Kenneth McClane's first book of autobiographical essays (originally published in 1991), is closely related to his second collection, Color, published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2009. Walls is a powerful and deeply moving meditation on relationships. It begins with an essay on the death of McClane's brother, Paul, which "changed everything. Time, my work, everything found a new calculus." His brother's life and death are present in some way in all the essays that follow "A Death in the Family," as McClane tells us about giving a poetry reading in a maximum-security prison; his experience of being one of the first two African American students to attend America's oldest private school; teaching creative writing; his sister, Adrienne; a divestment protest at Cornell; and his encounters with James Baldwin. McClane has written a new preface to this paperback edition of Walls.
"Walls reminds us of the differences that set us apart, dividing our world into good kids and troublemakers, winners and losers, the beautiful and the damned. The anodyne for exile in these essays is McClane's common but by no means commonplace lexicon, at once evocative and spare, that leads us to painful but honest connection and the luminous possibility of empathy." --William L. Andrews, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"Kenneth McClane's Walls is a collection of exquisitely crafted autobiographical essays that rivals the most profound nonfictional writings of James Baldwin in its skillful investigation of the hidden recesses of the always-throbbing black American soul. Indeed, Walls is a beautifully calibrated exploration of the challenges faced by a courageously self-aware--and refreshingly self-revealing--black intellectual whose journey to and in the American mainstream is both menacing and exhilarating." --Michael Awkward, University of Michigan
"Walls reminds us of the differences that set us apart, dividing our world into good kids and troublemakers, winners and losers, the beautiful and the damned. The anodyne for exile in these essays is McClane's common but by no means commonplace lexicon, at once evocative and spare, that leads us to painful but honest connection and the luminous possibility of empathy." --William L. Andrews, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"Kenneth McClane's Walls is a collection of exquisitely crafted autobiographical essays that rivals the most profound nonfictional writings of James Baldwin in its skillful investigation of the hidden recesses of the always-throbbing black American soul. Indeed, Walls is a beautifully calibrated exploration of the challenges faced by a courageously self-aware--and refreshingly self-revealing--black intellectual whose journey to and in the American mainstream is both menacing and exhilarating." --Michael Awkward, University of Michigan
- GenresEssays
120 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1991
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July 21, 2016
I encountered this book by chance and I will never be quite the same, after reading the incredibly eloquent and moving essays of Kenneth A. McClane. I distributed some of his quotes in an Upward Bound Language Arts class I just taught. Here they are, to give you a taste of the author's intimate and heart-breaking, yet cool, rational style:
1. On a visit to Auburn Correctional Facility:
“If you are a prisoner, it might take you a dozen years to realize that the life you hope to create requires, above all else, that it be lived within these walls, for these walls do not go away.
For those of us who are visiting—and this, indeed, is the greatest privilege—our status is in our faces, our movements, our bowels. We know, and we cling to this as we might to our children, that we shall walk out of here, tonight, at a certain hour.” (p. 36)
As any jailor knows, the walls of the future are always dismantled in the future; but if there is no future … then the present becomes the almighty, and the walls become unconquerable. Although I did not interview the jailers, I did see the jailed. For most of them, the walls without had become the walls within; and such walls never, no matter what Joshua does, come a-tumbling down.” (p. 41)
2. On childhood and attending an exclusive private school in New York
“Much of my lingering sense of self-disappointment involves my inability at that time to express my rage. Like the protagonist in Ellison’s novel, at every turn I was swallowing blood.” (p. 55)
3. On power and anger
“Discomfort rarely makes one generous; discomfort that seems forever one’s lot, that seems never to be shared by others, makes one brutal. And so we—powerless in the real questions of fate—were ready with rocks … And, as human history again and again asserts, the powerless are powerful in only one thing: hate for the powerful.” (p. 57)
On behalf of my students, many of whom are African-American teenagers, ages 15-16, I would like to thank Kenneth A. McClane for allowing us to share his conscience for a while, and draw inspiration from his glowing intellect. The chapter on his encounters with James Baldwin is also captivating.
1. On a visit to Auburn Correctional Facility:
“If you are a prisoner, it might take you a dozen years to realize that the life you hope to create requires, above all else, that it be lived within these walls, for these walls do not go away.
For those of us who are visiting—and this, indeed, is the greatest privilege—our status is in our faces, our movements, our bowels. We know, and we cling to this as we might to our children, that we shall walk out of here, tonight, at a certain hour.” (p. 36)
As any jailor knows, the walls of the future are always dismantled in the future; but if there is no future … then the present becomes the almighty, and the walls become unconquerable. Although I did not interview the jailers, I did see the jailed. For most of them, the walls without had become the walls within; and such walls never, no matter what Joshua does, come a-tumbling down.” (p. 41)
2. On childhood and attending an exclusive private school in New York
“Much of my lingering sense of self-disappointment involves my inability at that time to express my rage. Like the protagonist in Ellison’s novel, at every turn I was swallowing blood.” (p. 55)
3. On power and anger
“Discomfort rarely makes one generous; discomfort that seems forever one’s lot, that seems never to be shared by others, makes one brutal. And so we—powerless in the real questions of fate—were ready with rocks … And, as human history again and again asserts, the powerless are powerful in only one thing: hate for the powerful.” (p. 57)
On behalf of my students, many of whom are African-American teenagers, ages 15-16, I would like to thank Kenneth A. McClane for allowing us to share his conscience for a while, and draw inspiration from his glowing intellect. The chapter on his encounters with James Baldwin is also captivating.
Displaying 1 of 1 review