May 30, 2005
Clemens's life has been shaped by three powerful factors: his autoworker father's rock-solid decency and fair-mindedness; a good Catholic education through high school (and natural bookishness); and the experience of growing up as a white kid in a black city. This last aspect forms the basis of Clemens's probing, insightful memoir. In 1973, Clemens's birth year, Coleman Young became Detroit's first black mayor and reigned for 20 years thereafter. During that time, the city lost half its population and nearly all its white citizens, and became the murder, arson and unwed mother capital of the non-warring world, with enough crime, corruption and lack of common sense at government levels to classify as a Third World city. Is such a statement racist? Clemens wrestles with that question, using his own life experience, especially in high school sports, and his obsessive reading of James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and even Coleman Young. He concludes that he is not a racist—he's in fact become a middle-class liberal. Though Clemens retains doubts, he seems as fair in his self-analysis as his much-loved father, and despite some scares, he has not yet abandoned Detroit. Agent, Timothy Seldes.