Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood

I was first drawn to this book after watching a television interview of Leonard Pitts, Jr. as he discussed the book. What an interview! What a book! I once heard a person say, "Real Men don't have to prove it." This certainly speaks of Leonard Pitts, Jr. He doesn't have to ask anyone's permission to be who he is and he doesn't have to prove to anyone else that he is a man. He is able to be vulnerable and strong at the same time. Those whose stories he writes are equally brave and candid. He is a man with straight-shooting, hard-hitting advice for a new generation of African American men, and some advice for women as well. His frustration with men who blindly accept the stereotypes placed on them by a thoughtless society comes through loud and strong. Men do have a choice. And women do have have a choice as to where they place their standards. Because this book is aimed at African American culture, it will not have as strong of an emotional impact with those who are in a different culture. Pity, because strip away the cultural references and his message is one that needs to be heard by everyone.

I read this book back in January and thought about how different a life I had compared to Leonard Pitts Jr. Pitts spoke about how his father held the family a gunpoint twice and about how he beat his mother and siblings whenever the father became intoxicated. Pitts basically stated how once his father died of cancer he was basically forgotten about, but never forgiven for the things he had done to make their lives so complicated for his family. Pitts speaks to other men in a focus group setting about their relationships with their children and the mother of their children. Some of the relationships seemed as if the father really did not know what to say or do with the children and some of the children felt who is the mystery man? My heart went out to so many of the men, women and children who never got acquainted or tried and failed. I believe that so many men make children and probably fallout with the mother of their children. So many men see the "baby mama" as an obstacle who makes them feel inadequate or uncomfortable.I had a friend who fathered a child with a woman and had not seen the child in the tweleve years that the child has been on earth except for the day he was born. My friend received a letter one day from his son wanting to see him and my friend wanted to go out and buy everything in the mall for his son. I explained to my friend that money can't buy love and I said that the most valuable gift you can give to your son is history. I explained to my friend that he should tell his son where he came from, his family, and take the boy on a trip to see where his father grew up. The boy is curious to know about his father, but also about himself and so often we lose sight of that by purchasing expensive that could never fill the void of family history.

A wonderful combination of ethnography and autobiography. I especially appreciated the candidness on page 171, when the author describes visiting his father's grave after being hit with many hurtful memories. He was finally able to really grieve about the painful years of abuse. It needs to be understood in our society that time does not diminish feelings. The passage reminded me of an interview with Morrie Schwartz when he cried about his mother's death that had happened many years ago. Ted Koppell asked him why it was still so painful after all this time and Morrie explained how time did not take away the feelings. I really appreciate men being able to open up and disclose their pain. This book has also helped me understand men's anger towards their emotionally unavailable fathers a lot better.

Anyone who doubts the importance of fathers and the influence they have on our lives should read this book. The book is a compilation of interviews Mr. Pitts conducted with a number of Black men on their relationships with their fathers. It is interspersed with his observations, which, as usual for this syndicated columnist, are especially acute. The common thread is pain, and some of the interviews are absolutely heart-wrenching. However, the book ends on a hopeful note with Mr. Pitts prescriptions for how to stem this tide of pain and anger that surely affect us all.

Using techniques employed successful over the years by writer Studs Terkel, and a sense of honesty rarely employed on the issue of black fatherhood, Leonard Pitts in his book "Becoming Dad" has written a book that is bound to change the manner in which the issue of black fatherhood is discussed. This is not professional analysis by some paid expert on human relationships; this is an outstanding writer telling you his story of growing up in a dysfunctional relationship with his own father, and interspersing his drama with the stories of other black men who can speak about their own flawed relationships. They may be an absentee and/or abusive father or a son being abused and left behind or even both, but all of those possibilities are here in "Becoming Dad". Of course, the issue of black fatherhood has been written about or discussed extensively before by sociologists, poets, psychologists, politicians, ministers and other learned individuals, but Leonard Pitts, perhaps, has done what many others have seemingly refused to do: he has allowed the fathers and the sons to speak and tell their stories. For who else knows this story but those who have lived it. Although the story itself is Pitts' journey towards reconciliation with his own deceased father and his personal attempt to understand fatherhood, Pitts uses these as his foundation for a broader sketch, where the moments he captures are precise and real and brutally honest and where responses to Pitts questions open wounds which most who responded thought were healed. But that is Pitts'point; there will be no healing until those who have been hurt personally face the issue head on. Black man after black man is allowed in Pitts' "Becoming Dad" to tell their story. Fathers who have failed admit failure. Sons who despise their fathers vent their anger. And others who have enjoyed good relationships with their fathers provide the groundwork for potential success in the sacred journey of fatherhood. Pitts seems to place the microphone in their hands and tells these men, who are in so much pain, to speak and to speak honestly. When one proud black father, Curtis, is asked poignantly by Pitts if he hated his own father, Pitts related that Curtis almost weeped; but Curtis begins tapping his chest and tells Pitts that "something just turned off" when you asked me that. Curtis doesn't have to tell you his answer; you know his answer. By the end, Pitts, who has become a proud and able father, but who still asks himself in the book, "how do you become dad...when it's something you've never seen?", resolves himself to write a letter to his deceased father to bring a sense of closure to his own pain, to the father who he says at the beginning of the book, "sits in memory like a boulder in a river." Pitts not only forgives his father, but he tells him he loves him because he was his father. It is an interesting choice by Pitts considering his anger