central character, it also focuses on an urban teen
who must face and overcome major obstacles in
his lives. Brother Hood captures the dilemma of the
16-year-old protagonist, Nathaniel Whitely, who
grows up in Harlem and earns a scholarship to at-
tend a prestigious boarding school in upstate New
York. Although he is made to straddle two differ-
ent worlds as a result—the wealth and privilege at
the school and the danger and bleak prospects in
his Harlem neighborhood—Nathaniel must still
try to carve a niche for himself without losing his
soul. According to reviewer Hazel Rochman, “With
all the laughter and trouble, [Brother Hood] is a
stirring celebration of Harlem, its roots, diversity,
and change” (108).
In a short time, McDonald’s works, with their
upbeat messages and gritty, urban realism, have
found a following among many new young read-
ers. Targeting especially black girls and challenging
them to “deal with the real,” McDonald believes
that there is hope for young adults—even those
who live in some of the toughest environments,
like the one she survived. McDonald’s works, which
demonstrate her wit and talent, are a welcome new
addition to African-American young adult litera-
ture written since the 1970s by her contemporaries
Kristen Hunter, Louise Meriwether, Sharon Bell
Mathis, ROSA GUY, and Virginia Hamilton.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gillen, Janet. Review of Chill Wind. School Library
Journal (November 2002): 173.
Ivory, Sara. Review of Project Girl. New York Times
Book Review, 7 February 1999, p. 17.
Kennedy, Thomas E. “Up from Brooklyn: An Inter-
view with Janet McDonald.” Literary Review 44,
no. 4 (Summer 2001): 704–720.
Morrison, Sharon. Review of Twists and Turns. School
Library Journal 49, no. 9 (2003): 217.
Ratnesar, Romesh. Review of Project Girl. Time, 1
March 1999, p. 81.
Review of Spellbound. Publishers Weekly 250, no. 48
(December 1, 2003): 59.
Rochman, Hazel. Review of Brother Hood. Booklist
(January 1, 2004): 108.
Loretta G. WoodardMcElroy, Colleen Johnson (1935– )
In her own account of the genesis of her writing
career, Colleen McElroy writes, “I was educated in
a school system that led me to believe all writers
were male, white, and dead—three conditions I
had no wish to assume. There. I’ve said it. What
I consider tradition does not fall within that for-
mula. Those literature courses I could endure pre-
sented poems as exacting, technical snippets of
obscurity and abstraction. Those courses neglected
my world and the people in it, all the women in
my family—my grandmother, mother and her sis-
ters—women who wove wonderful tales of truth
and love, life and death. Yet it is because of those
women that I have become a poet, or more pre-
cisely, a storyteller” (McElroy, 125).
A gifted poet, writer of fiction and nonfiction,
and folklorist, McElroy is a native of St. Louis,
Missouri. She was born on October 30, 1935, to
Percia Purcell and Ruth Celeste Rawls. She grew
up on Kennerly Avenue in the home of her grand-
mother, Anna Belle Long, or “Mama,” as she was
affectionately called. As a young girl, Colleen often
eavesdropped on her mother and her aunts spin-
ning stories. Learning early the rudiments of sto-
rytelling, she developed what she has called her
“romance with language.” McElroy attended the
segregated Public School of St. Louis, graduating
from the all-black Charles Sumner High School in- A decade earlier, however, her mother had re-
married, this time to Jesse Dalton Johnson, a native
of Columbus, Georgia; McElroy moved often with
her family, beginning her lifelong fascination with
travel. By age 21 she had lived in St. Louis, Wyo-
ming, Kansas, Frankfurt, and Munich, Germany,
where she attended college from 1953 to 1955.
After graduating from Kansas State Univer-
sity in 1956, McElroy entered the University of
Pittsburgh to become a speech therapist. While
there, she met and married Burl Wilkinson, with
whom she had two children; subsequently, she re-
turned to Kansas State University, where, in 1963,
she completed her master’s degree. Her multiple
careers as mother, student, and speech therapist,
however, apparently took their toll, and in 1964,
her marriage to Wilkinson ended. In 1966 McElroy
migrated to the Pacific Northwest to become the
344 McElroy, Colleen Johnson