Not so. Way Past Cool, a gritty tale of life among two rival Oakland gangs—"Little Rascals with Uzis," Mowry calls them—is a success. The Los Angeles Times called it a "wrenching" novel that "crackles with authenticity." Jonathan Galassi, editor-in-chief of Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, Mowry's publisher, likens Mowry to Dickens. Disney bought the film option for $75,000, and paperback rights may go for $150,000.
Mowry, 32, disdains the role of rising literary light. He's testy and elusive. No reporter has seen his home or family, his mailing address is a post office box in Santa Cruz, and he's reachable only on a cellular phone. According to Mowry, the facts of his life are these: He was born in Mississippi to a white mother and black father (he won't name them) who soon split. Father and son moved to Oakland, where Mowry dropped out of school at 13. For a time he protected a drug dealer, toting a pistol. But he also read voraciously. "My father showed me books were cool," Mowry says.
Working as a mechanic and scrap collector, Mowry began writing in 1988. His first book, Rats in the Trees, won a PEN award in 1990. But the success of Way Past Cool has left him torn. Though he can better support his family, which he claims includes companion Markita Brown and their four children, ages 8 to 16, fame and fortune have made him feel a misfit in his old neighborhood. Mowry wants to keep writing—he's at work on a book about his Southern roots—but beyond that, anything is possible. "For all I know," he says, "we may move to Kenya."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
