A JOURNEY TO MANHOOD FROM THE PATH OF AN IDIOT

Brown’s memoir details the trials and tribulations he suffered on his path to maturity.

The author was 7 years old when his mother had enough of his father’s abusive behavior and threw him out of their home. This loss of his father, the one person he looked to for advice and guidance, left him confused and embittered, setting him on a destructive trajectory. Although Brown was aware of “the shouting—sharp, bitter echoes that ricocheted through the walls,” he writes that he never saw his father physically attack his mother. His sister, however, recalls their mother making threats: “You can hit me. You can punch me. You can ridicule me all you want, … But just remember – you have to go to sleep at some point.” By the age of 8, Brown was sneaking out of the house late in the evening, earning five dollars a night to warn the occupants of the drug house across the street of anyone approaching. (“I became a creature of the streets, a lone survivor hardened by necessity.”) The author struggled with academics and quit high school, but he returned to earn his equivalency degree and went on to earn a graduate degree in human services administration and counseling. His life remained troubled until he found religion. Brown’s loquacious prose is articulate and intense. He describes his reaction when his father told him to “Always pimp the game”: “At that moment, I realized the hard truth: like a stray dog left behind on a stormy night, I had been abandoned.” At times, he ventures into the overly dramatic: “I clutched my anger like burning coal, refusing to let it go even as it scorched me.” While the author’s experience speaks directly to disadvantaged young Black men, Brown’s evolution from child to adult should resonate with any man who may still be wrestling with lingering patterns of childlike behaviors and tantrums.

A guide for young Black men and others seeking guidance for achieving positive masculinity.