Title: Why Fathers Cry at Night by Kwame Alexander
Book Beginning/First Line Friday Quote:
I was two. It was my birthday. She gave me wooden blocks in all shapes.
Friday56 quote:
"Portrait of a New Lover: Genesis"five minutes aftershe reads his noteher smile explodes.She wonders if he is the one
Summary: Kwame Alexander is a poet and children's author. This book is his memoir. In telling his story Alexander uses love poems, letters, recipes, and remembrances.
Review: I guess you could call me a Kwame Alexander fan. I've read ten of his books, starting with his Newbery Medal prize winning book, The Crossover. Of that book I wrote: "Best YA book I've read all year and, added benefit, it only took a little over an hour to read. The concrete poems were my favorites." The book, a novel in verse, introduced me to this fine poet and I've been firmly in his camp ever since.
Why Fathers Cry at Night is not a typical memoir. For one thing it is stuffed full of love poems written for girl friends who became his wives. (He's divorced.) Reading these poems felt a little voyeuristic for some reason. If I was reading the same information in prose, would I feel the same way? Hmm, not sure. In the book Alexander grapples with how to relate to his daughters now that he is estranged from their mothers and is still dealing with his grief over the death of his mother, six year after she passed.
Initially I wasn't very impressed by the format perhaps because he was sharing poems he'd written early on in his career and they weren't as good as his later stuff, or maybe it just took me a while to accept the amount of information he was willing to share and settle for that. Later I was fully invested in the author's story and the format of the memoir. I am even tempted to try his mother's fried chicken recipe. I enjoyed reading how food and music were all tangled up in his memories. Aren't they tangled up in all of our lives?
My rating: 4.5 stars.
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