From the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, his first work of prose: a deeply felt memoir of a family\'s bonds and a meditation on race, addiction, fatherhood, ambition, and American cultureThe Pardlos were an average, middle-class African American family living in a New Jersey Levittown: charismatic Gregory Sr., an air Traffic controller, his wife, and their two sons, bookish Greg Jr.
In chronicling his path to recovery and adulthood--Gregory Pardlo gives us a compassionate, loving ode to his father, to fatherhood, and to the frustrating-yet-redemptive ties of family, as well as a scrupulous, searing examination of how African American manhood is shaped by contemporary American life..
Then, he finally grapples with the irresistible yet ruinous legacy of masculinity he inherited from his father.
Years later, he falls for a beautiful, no-nonsense woman named Ginger and becomes a parent himself. rebels--he joins a boot camp for prospective Marines, follows a woman to Denmark, drops out of college again and again, and yields to alcoholism.
While Big Greg succumbs to addiction and exhausts the family\'s money, Greg Jr.
But when "Big Greg" loses his job after participating in the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Strike of 1981, he becomes a disillusioned, toxic, looming presence in the household--and a powerful rival for young Greg. and musical-talent Robbie.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, his first work of prose: a deeply felt memoir of a family\'s bonds and a meditation on race, addiction, fatherhood, ambition, and American cultureThe Pardlos were an average, middle-class African American family living in a New Jersey Levittown: charismatic Gregory Sr., an air Traffic controller, his wife, and their two sons, bookish Greg Jr
