Chasing America: A Memoir

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)