Fathering Words

by E. Ethelbert Miller

Book Overview

Fathering Words, E. Ethelbert Miller's first memoir, explores his development as an African American writer, the responsibility of his chosen career, and his ambitions to raise the consciousness of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312241364
• ISBN13: 9780312241360
• Release Date: June 2000
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 178 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Fathering Grief and Discovering Love

Fathering Words portrays the grief and loss one man feels when his father and brother suddenly die within two years of each other. Their deaths cause Miller to recall how seldom he and his father spoke, and yet, he always knows his father loves the family. That singular way one person cares for and remembers another is at the spiritual core of this book. What does a son inherit from the men in his family when there are few conversations? Miller compares his life and his dreams to that of his older brother, and maps out the goals for his own future as he marries, has his own children, and embarks on his career as a poet. He punctuates the story with the gracious voice of his older sister, Marie, as he imagines how the family might have looked to her. Marie carries the secrets and stories that filter down to the younger son as rumors and tales. She becomes a source of information and verification of the family history. Using a network of subtle references to religion, classical and jazz music, basketball and baseball, as well as motifs from literary works, Miller provides a number of avenues by which a broad spectrum of readers will be able to enter and inhabit his poignant text. For those who want to write about their own lives, the book provides a model for creating scenes in small vignettes that become interconnected by the end of the chapter, as opposed to providing a direct narrative path from the beginning of a life to the present. For writers who aspire to become published, and perhaps even famous, Miller chronicles the encounters he has with a number of writers, revealing the history of African American literature in the past thirty years. I teach Fathering Words in a senior-level college course on autobiography at the University of Southern Indiana. ...

A gift from heaven

If I had received this book five years ago, it would have saved me five years of pain and confusion. Fathering Words is the tangible witness of a man's journey into and through his writing life. Unlike many writing memoirs, it is not a how to, or even a how, but a detatched narrative of his life as a poet. He is eerily objective about the mistakes and choices he has made, and uses occasional passages from his sister to broaden the view he gives the reader. I learned more about the writing process, more about the yearning that true writers feel, and more about the lack of understanding that non-artists have about the whys and wherefores. If you know an African-American man who yearns to "father words", buying this book for him will be the best show of support you can give him.

Remarkable

Fathering Words is a deeply moving memoir. Ethelbert Miller's description of his father will remain with the reader for a very long time. His decision to write the book using both his and his sister's voice is unique and it works.It's definitely a keeper.

Poetic Fathering

This book is so beautifully written, so touchingly direct that I called Howard University to search out the author and tell him what a compelling book he had written. Anyone who is a father, about to be a father or contemplating being a father (whether African-American or not) will find this book touching in what it says about the frequently mute love between fathers and their sons. African-Americans families are often love mutes like Mr. Miller's-- too busy working, too focused on the quotidien to express love outside provision of food and shelter. Out of such silent, seemingly fallow ground, E. Ethelbert Miller heaps up words of love and power, fathering not only his own father, but his whole family in some of the most poetic prose you will ever read.

Portrait of the Man as a Young Artist

Ethelbert Miller has given a gift to his children and to all of us who yearn to be good fathers. This memoir of growing up and into the life of a poet is honest in its substance, but in its form as well. Though he claims to commit to prose what poetry cannot convey, his images leap suddenly from the page and demand the careful savoring a poem requires. An off-hand remark from his father as the two of them watch television is remembered with these words: "It doesn't matter how old I am, his words will find a place in the cuff of my pants, in the corner of my coat pocket..." His reflection on his father's legacy is summed up with the poignant words which speak to every son: "My father's love was measured by the distance between us." And no excerpt can do justice to the stunning comparison between the Middle Passage and the population of African-American young men in today's prisons.Ethelbert Miller has never forgotten a kindness shown to him -- neither by a friend nor a mentor -- and he chronicles his attempts to repay them by kindnesses in return to Black writers. For all his nurture of others, the book reveals a compelling loneliness.Recently, he had the privilege of delivering the commencement address at his daughter's high school graduation. She introduced him with words of admiration and love which would make any father cry with gratitude and relief. "Fathering Words" is not just about the making of an Afrian American writer. It is also evidence that we may fail to become the fathers we never had, but we may (accidentally?) succeed at becoming the fathers we were meant to be.