The early 1960s were a time of turmoil, not least for the youth who found themselves in high school or college. Though it was a time of hope, expectation and a yearning for something new, not all the changing times were welcome. Children raised in one society found themselves as adolescents in another. Just Call Me Whitey is set in the now half-forgotten America at the cusp of tectonic national--and generational--changes, when America was only first emerging from its sordid history of bigotry and hate, where a black man could not become president of the United States and was routinely denied even society's most common conveniences such as the use of a lunch counter or a public drinking fountain. Bill Doyle's childhood seems lost to him, only to be found in his disturbing dreams, until he begins to understand the changes that time and the family move from Ohio to Maryland have brought. Time and toil have rendered an earlier version of Bill's story, published in 2010 as Smartass, An Awakening, fuller and more relevant.
Born toward the end of the Second World War, Bill Doyle, son of a tenant farmer and a school teacher, grows up during the 1950s, largely unaware of the privileges his white skin has given him. Surrounded by those far more privileged with wealth and success than he, he enjoys life in a Maryland suburb of Washington DC after the family's move from rural Ohio. Bill faces the crises of adolescence somewhat willingly and not without innovative daring. One such crisis is one faced by his nation: "Civil Rights," the need to practice some democracy for a change, or suffer from the world's sour opinion and increased resistance. Equal rights for all citizens regardless of color, origin or religion. Equal opportunities under the law. Gradually Bill becomes aware of segregation in the border state of Maryland, between the North and the South, where social integration of blacks and whites is suddenly caught in the slowness of its progress. Bill faces losing his father. Falling in love is also in the center of what happens to him. When whites couldn't own blacks with a deed to prove it, anymore, there was Jim Crow. Decades upon decades of it. Segregation and Degradation. Bill's reactions to the Movement struggles of the early 1960s will change his life forever. This story is one of that time, by one who lived it.
Brian Kelly graduated from Harvard with honors in English in 1967. He is currently working on four additional novels, Our American, Mother Russia, Commie Spy and The Soviet Patriot From Brooklyn, to complete a Russian quintet which began with The Irish Smuggler, a tale of international criminal adventure, published in 2013. Our American will be published in 2016 and Mother Russia in early 2017. Kelly's first novel, Tropic of Paradise, A Tahitian Love Story, published in 2010, is another coming of age tale, but set on the 'island of love' in a golden hued South Pacific. Kelly currently lives and works far from Tahiti, in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
