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| THE WORD: NOVEL IDEAS |
| Fatherhood Takes Center Stage |
| On Saturday, June 16th from 1-4 p.m., Sisterspace and Books will be the venue
for a provocative panel of women discussing father-daughter
relationships-both the negative and positive, pain and joy, hurt and healing.
This Father's Day program featuring authors Jonetta Rose Barras and Gloria
Wade-Gayles, will honor these men in our lives and celebrate their presence,
as well as discuss what it means to mourn their various forms of absence.
While the special bond between African-American fathers and sons has been
explored, the intricate story of African-American father-daughter
relationships is only beginning to be unraveled. |
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Whatever Happened to Daddy's Little Girl?: The Impact of Fatherlessness
By Jonetta Rose BARRAS |
| Jonetta Rose Barras explored a major thread of the conversation with her book, Whatever Happened to Daddy's Little Girl?: The Impact of Fatherlessness
on Black Women. By the time the local author and journalist was eight, she
had lost three fathers. At 37 years old she finally met her biological father
and after an afternoon with him, she began to instinctively understand the
connection between the poor choices she had made in her life and the years
this man -- and all her "fathers" had been absent. |
| The Million Man March, with its emphasis on fathers and sons, set her on a
journey of discovery: If the absence of a father handicaps a son, what
happens to daughters? She knew all too well the sadness and the doubts that
plagued her life. What was happening to all the other daughters? This is the
question that Barras seeks to answer in her book. |
Father Songs: Testimonies by African-American Sons
By Gloria Wade Gayles |
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| Gloria Wade Gayles' book Father Songs: Testimonies by African-American Sons
and Daughters, is the first book of its kind to explore the complex
relationships that exist between African-American sons, daughter and their
fathers. Loving, enraged, wounded, heroic. These are our fathers. In prose,
poetry and fiction more than 60 of our most gifted writers, among them James
Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Delores Kendrick, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker,
Ntozake Shange, pay tribute to the first and most important man in their
lives. From the search for their fathers in painful memories to the
celebration of their fathers' lives and the gifts they gave, each affirms the
central role this relationship has played in their lives. Ultimately Father
Songs offer forgiveness for past mistakes and an invitation to begin anew. |
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Fathering Words: The Making of An African-American Writer
By E. Ethelbert MILLER |
| While at Sisterspace for this discussion you may want to pick up a copy of E.
Ethelbert Miller's book Fathering Words: The Making of An African-American
Writer, (St. Martin's Press). Miller, the director of Howard University's
African-American Resource Center, takes a decidedly unique path in exploring
the theme of fatherhood. Miller presents his memoir in two voices: his own,
on one page, and his sister's, on the page next to it. The result is a
wonderful duet that tells two stories woven together into one. In his book,
the author of five collections of poetry, looks back at his family,
especially his father and on his development as a writer. In the process he
explores what he, as a man, as an African American, as a poet, as a son, and
as a father, learned from his own father. Moving beyond the loss of both his
father and brother, Miller recounts how love survived in his family, and
explores his development as an African-American writer, the responsibility of
his chosen career, and his ambitions to raise the consciousness of
African-American people.
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