Reader Advisory disclaimer: the contents of this write-up were inspired by the conversation alluded to below and the piece: Richard Wright to Jay-Z: The Decline of Young Black Male Literary Writers by KL Reeves. Lyrics and prose are intended for entertainment and thought-provoking purposes only and were not intended to harm any writers actually doing the work described to be missing there-in…

It’s 11:41 AM and I’m looking at my favorite picture of my father and me. Generously, I piece together the smile that I have in the photo with the stories that I’ve heard about our relationship. My mother says that we were inseparable. Something that must be true because I know what it feels like when I talk to him, even though the togetherness she speaks of ended thirty-four years ago. I know what it should look like because Shuckey and I share those moments, and in between our laughs I sometimes joke and say I’ve been around nine years too long because he’s eleven. 

…but I’ve got daddy issues, that’s on me. I know I’m looking for I love you’s, and barely empathizing for my relief like Pulitzer winner Kendrick Lamar says on Father Time, a track from what feels like his latest novel, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. For me, this show, Books are Pop Culture is therapeutic because I’ve often said how much I hate the internet and the lies we argue about as truths that we zip ourselves up in and die for in comment sections. I was born and raised in Mississippi, I live in Mississippi and there’s a certain relationship with reality that I have because of it; this reality makes me more concerned with breaking up the skirmish between the women about to come to blows in the wing spot–while I was waiting on my hot-lemon-pepper-wings–than with celebrity drama. I’m more interested in a resolution for them, than being on the internet. So when I’m asked off the air by an author what I think about black masculinity in contemporary novels, this relationship with reality sends me into a passionate tirade about how I don’t see me and my homies in none of the stories of people who say they love me, and how I know EXACTLY where the homies are, and who’s writing them.

The rappers I love, like Kendrick Lamar, Juvenile, J. Cole, Lupe Fiasco, and Jay Z are the authors of the stories that house the men I know. I don’t see them in the pages (often), but I see them alive and well, striving in the stories of these men who seem to have replaced the arbiters of black masculinity in the black imagination. 

I knew I would never be a teacher forever, and that filled me, an already fearless man, with a certain level of invincibility that I don’t think exists in the profession. Because of this, I often used rap lyrics in the classroom exactly how the students encountered them, raw and unfiltered, and drew correlations, and real-world applications from the lines. 

I’m charging $600 for some big Os. You do business with me you’re coming back to get mo.’ My shit is fire, and it’s jumping back to 29. So a Nigga shouldn’t have no problem with me getting mine. 

In these margins, I and my students do the math we know. The price of the fictitious ounce is $600 and the transaction is a good one because there are 28 grams in the ounce, but the love is there, hidden in the extra gram, so there shouldn’t be an issue with the price, nor a problem, because as Juvie says on another song, I’m showing you love, but I love my money EVEN more. I think on the surface the portal through which we explore these nuances is often scrutinized because of the subject matter, but the destination is the dialogue, and William Faulkner said, “A writer needs three things: experience, observation, and imagination — any two of which, at times any one of which — can supply the lack of the others.” In a place like the Miss-Lou the realities I mentioned earlier, never find us lacking in either of these three, and-so like the brothers behind these pens, a certain black masculinity emerges rife with the things contemporary literature seems afraid to allow their male characters to show up as. When I was asked that question, I couldn’t help myself, it was as if the holy ghost took hold of my arms, and I threw them in the air and because I was live, I waved them… like I just didn’t care.

But why AREN’T we talking about not seeing our homeboys, our lovers, our brothers, our fathers, and our uncles in these stories like we know we should? Where are the men in our living rooms who can’t spell patriarchy, but break down the black and mild cigars we bring them back from the store and take the glue off with their saliva, to get the chemicals off and reach the purity of the draw? How are we tweeting about the men we sit beside, like their realities don’t exist, like the process of what we call freaking that cigar, isn’t the very transformation we claim we want to see in the lives of the men our words don’t reflect, the men these ideologies don’t ever reach? I feel like we’re right beside them, but not speaking directly to them, and often, knowing that I sat beside them, I know the process of taking that cigar apart because from age 15 until my son was born, I smoked black and milds, and though I know I’ve been reading since I was 3, when I was 15 the men I knew, loved, and imitated, merged with the man I was becoming and the universe conspired not to lead me to create literature, but 16s I saw myself in. Had more writers spoken to the men I know, like Jesmyn Ward’s brothers in Men We Reaped–brothers who she sat on the backs of cars with and smoked black and milds with–had that happened, had that existed, then maybe Wooda doesn’t emerge, and maybe I don’t get on an IGlive with Kiese Laymon, Reggie Bailey, and Crystal Forte and say I’m not interested in writing something that wins a Kirkus prize, I’m tryna live on the literary chitlin circuit for a bit. I want to win the hot chip on the separate aisle from the lays award, or as I said on the IGlive, The Black and Mild prize for the best debut novel. 

It’s 1:38 am on the same day that I was looking at the photo of me and my father, and the witching hours are beginning. We just sprang forward, so I’ve lost an hour too, so really it’s only 12:38 am and 3 minutes away from starting this piece. Nas would read this and say time is Illmatic, and yesterday, I think it was obvious that I wanted to be a rapper, not a writer, because I posted a video of my son training to my Instastory, and you can hear it. If you’re familiar with 1998, and you remember when 400 Degreez by Juvenile came out, then you remember when Jay Z came down (he didn’t actually come down, but shit follow me now Woahdie, cause I’m a real hot boy…) and wrote with Juvie, as Langston Hughes (shit did Langston ever come down either? Or did he just send her letters like Jay sent Juvie that remix?) wrote with Zora, deep in the south kicking up top game. The rest of the world thought the song the two composed separately–Juvie first and then Jay hearing it, remixed it and sent it back–strange because in it Juvie says ha at the end of every line. This happens precisely as I exclaim to my son in the video: It feels good huh? Feel like you got that ball on a string like a yo-yo huh? It’s because I was raised down here, and I was there in ‘98, in the Miss-Lou, and so the man I was becoming then was reflecting back at me in an album that could be one of the greatest novels of all time.

While under the influence of the ghost I mentioned earlier, Reggie calls me during the very training session I mentioned with Shuckey to talk about this piece being born. While we’re talking about the men that are missing, I see two brothers on the court present beside me seconds away from blows, just like the women in the chicken place. And just like I stopped that fight, I told Reggie to hold on so I could intervene there, but I didn’t have the time to hang up the phone. Reggie listened as walked over and watched the two white men who had come in with them, who were playing in the game with the brothers, sit down. And I promise this isn’t an essay about race, but I think it’s worth saying that those two black men and I negotiated this moment of black masculinity on our own terms and that cowards still die a thousand deaths when they sit down to watch men destroy themselves. Specifically, the men I love—the men that are missing from these books that I read, that I write about, that I smoked with, that I fought with, that I shared empathy with during this moment, and that I was careful to heal with via my interference. I told them both that after I left them to return to my son’s training I expected them to discuss this as men do, and that I love them both because I understand that teeter-tottering between healthy masculinity, and the more sinister portions of it, is a balancing act. But if writers really loved them, and some of them do, I’d see them write more moments like this one into the ether, to keep brothers like these from those more sinister portions by willing them into existence on the pages like these rappers do. 

It’s like Freddie Gibbs said in his song Practice:

(I’ve) got one foot in rap, one foot in the trap. But I’m really trapping for my homies that are too incompetent for this balancing act. If they really loved me they’d be keeping me from it, to keep it a hundred. How you complain about the price when you’re getting everything fronted?

To be fronted is to be given love for free, with the expectation that that love will be reciprocated on the back end due to the same loyalty shown on the front. So here we are confronted with another circumstance of love, neatly wrapped in prose like Juvenile’s 29 grams from earlier. And since I really love ALL my brothers it’s nothing for me to step in and keep them from it and keep it a hundred. So if winning those prizes means I’ll have to compromise the worthy journey towards being whole I’ve taken, that the men I sit around with take and sometimes chose to ignore then leave me out of that conversation. But like I said… 

I’m from Mississippi, and there’s a certain relationship with reality that I share that’s specific to me that I don’t see reflected as often as I would like in literature when it comes to masculinity; however, I did give you an example of where I have seen it done and done well in Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped. I know the internet is rife with the discussion between nonfiction, and fiction, so check out all her works of fiction like Salvage the Bones, which won the National Book Award in 2011. Though the novel features men who fight pit bulls, which I think we all know is terrible for obvious reasons, and which I also know, we all know actually happens all the time, all over the nation, it still rose to the top of the ranks to win one of the most coveted awards in literature, JUST like Kendrick Lamar’s Damn. Imagine that? You take a chance and write something real and win an award… Why aren’t more publishers letting folks tell more stories with actual people we know exist, instead of opting out for “safety?” Why do I mostly only see my folk, see myself, in these songs?

You’ve got to be thankful that Jesmyn took the risk to write the story as it should’ve been written, It makes sense that she is from Mississippi. So there’s a certain relationship with reality that she has, that I as a writer must have and maintain if I am ever to survive long enough to see my male characters through the journey through the more familiar perils of masculinity to come out whole or in pieces, like they should be allowed to.