McGill and “The Flutist of Bed-Stuy”

An inherent quality about Jerry McGill is that he loves to write. During his reading at MHCC on Thursday, as part of Mt. Hood’s “Mouths of Others” (guest speaker) reading series, the audience’s favorite questions were pertaining to his disability: “How do you find the strength?”

“Do you want closure?”

“Where do the two (race and disability) meet in your writing?”

His answers to which were, respectively:

“I really believe that people don’t think they have the strength, but I think the reality is we all kind of have this well deep inside of us.”

“The idea of closure is not important to me,”

And, “I don’t ever see the two meeting in my writing.”

Growing up in the lower east side of Manhattan in the 1970s, McGill enjoyed playing sports, from touch football to ballet. He got his first job at 10 years old, working at a friend’s parents’ grocery store to feed his burgeoning “addiction” to arcade games and pinball. He lived in public housing and was raised by his mother.

His 13-year-old life “changed drastically” on New Year’s Day after he was shot by an unknown assailant. The bullet lodged in his lower spine and remained there, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

McGill recorded these events in his autobiography, titled “Dear Marcus: a Letter to the Man Who Shot Me.”

Asked if writing was an occupation he discovered after his accident, McGill replied adamantly, “The truth is, from the earliest point I knew I was going to be a writer. I always knew that writing was something I loved, and that I was going to do… and I kept it up right up until my accident, and then shortly after started again.

“I always knew that writing was going to be my bread-winner,” he said.

McGill read not from his autobiography, but from a novel he has been working on, titled “The Flutist of Bed-Stuy.”

He described the novel as “semi-biographical,” as it describes a relationship he had with an elderly Jewish sculptor for whom he modeled. It’s stylized; in the book, she’s also a holocaust survivor. The story’s protagonist, a black man from Manhattan, dates her daughter, which McGill described as “a tragic love story.”

Despite his attachment to the material, McGill remained humble, saying, “It is really something I kind of pulled out of my butt.”

He explained his reason for writing the book was the juxtaposition the duo created. “I was very intrigued by what we looked like to other people,” he said.

Before McGill read, Mt. Hood writing instructor Michelle Hampton introduced him by reading an excerpt from “Dear Marcus.”

McGill said, “It’s funny hearing your words read back to you. Sometimes it’s like, ‘Wow, did I really write that?’ It feels like it’s so far behind me.”

Not that he dislikes “Dear Marcus,” he clarified. “I’m sure if you gave Shakespeare the chance he would go, ‘You know, that ‘Hamlet,’ there were some parts in it that really suck.’ ”

Aside from writing, McGill mentors disabled children and teaches writing workshops for convicts.

His presentation in the Visual Arts Theater showcased his vast array of writing skills, and appeared to move those who attended.

Scheduled to speak next in the reading series on April 8 is Dorothy Allison, a feminist, poet, and National Book Award nominee.