By Matthew Monks
It is entitled “The Bible According to A. Nigger” and is being sold strictly online as a “compilation of Christian beliefs from a Eubonic (sic) perspective.”
“I am Alpha Nigger – that's what the name stands for,” McNeary said. “It's a marketing thing,” he said of his pen name.
McNeary, who is black, is a former trucker whose career was derailed in 1994 after he threw out a few disks in his lower back loading a trailer. He hopes to sell enough copies of his 160-page tome to be able to move out of the Borden Avenue veteran's home where he has lived for 18 months.
McNeary advertises his book by handing out pamphlets near the veterans home and said he hopes exposure in the TimesLedger will help him move some copies.
“I'd take the money and buy a trailer because I enjoy the road and I enjoy driving,” he said. “Plus a few niggers might be saved, plus a few white people, plus a few yellow people.”
The 44-year-old said he's not worried that his bible's explosive title might turn people off. In fact, he's banking on it.
The world needs to be shaken up to the fact that for 2,000 years, he said, African Americans have been under-served in the original books – represented as only servants and slaves.
“God had themwrite our history because we as black people wouldn't write our own,” he wrote on his Web site, www.anigger.com. “Granted, there's a book here and a book there, about this tribe or that, but I say to you that we blacks as a people have no complete work of written history.”
The former Army medic, who served for four years in Germany in the early 1980s, said he has always envisioned a bible for black people. He grew up in Brooklyn, but never graduated from high school. He joined the Army after getting his GED.
Despite never practicing a formal religion, McNeary said he has been spiritual his entire life. He said his head swam with original scripture on long drives from coast to coast during his 10 years as a trucker, which he said were the best times of his life. He began organizing his thoughts when he landed in the veterans' home last year after a fallout with his longtime lover.
He would prowl the 400-bed facility preaching the word and pounding notes into a hand-held organizer.
He caught the eye of fellow resident David Todeschini, a Vietnam veteran who has written several books on war and faith that he has marketed online with the self-publishing Web site, Lulu.com, which prints books to order. He sold McNeary a laptop and helped him set up an account and a separate Web page.
“Somebody bought one already,” McNeary said. “The word has actually gone out. I'm a published author.”
A beefy, six-foot tall man who walks with a limp from his back injury and wears a weathered, brown fedora and throng of gold-colored chains, McNeary got so fired up during his take on Sodom and Gomorrah that he jumped from his chair to preach the tale at a Long Island City deli recently.
“I'm going to give you the end of the world. The end of this reality,” McNeary said. “This book is just a marker in the game to condemn everybody who didn't see the light.”
Visit www.anigger.com to read excerpts or buy a copy.
Reach reporter Matthew Monks by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
