{"product_id":"chasing-america-notes-from-a-rock-n-soul-integrationist-9780312271893","title":"Chasing America: Notes from a Rock 'n' Soul Integrationist","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eChasing America: Notes from a Rock 'n' Soul Integrationist\u003c\/strong\u003e by Watlington, Dennis. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780312271893.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"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 Watlingtons 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 Mens Passages\nChasing 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.\nBorn 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.\nChasing 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.\nPart Ellison, part Exley, Chasing America is an amazing story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Thomas Dunne Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67907356885045,"sku":"ByrdShop_0312271891","price":59.34,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780312271893.jpg?v=1794034404","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/chasing-america-notes-from-a-rock-n-soul-integrationist-9780312271893","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}