Becoming Dad

This is a revelatory, deeply personal examination of black fatherhood by Pulitzer winner Pitts. By turns painful and proud, this tale of black men bringing fatherhood to life tells the stories of extraordinary men who strive to become something they have never known. The fatherless black family is a problem that increases in proportion each year as generations of black children grow up without an adult male in the home. The minority of black men who do live with their children struggle with their roles, often undermined by the fact that they never had a father role model themselves. Leonard Pitts, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize, has interviewed hundreds of black men on the subject of fatherhood, relating their responses with unflinching honesty. The result is a disturbing, painful overview of a situation whose seriousness increases with every fresh generation of black, fatherless children: a situation in which black men are struggling to bring the idea of fatherhood to life. Extraordinary men, striving - in the absence of fathers, in the face of intolerance, in the shadow of their own weaknesses - to become something they have never seen.