Each of these essays illuminates an important dimension of the complex array of Black male experiences as workers, artists, warriors, and leaders. The essays describe the expectations and demands to struggle, to resist, and facilitate the survival of African American culture and community. Black manhood was shaped not only in relation to Black womanhood, but was variously nurtured and challenged, honed and transformed against a backdrop of white male power and domination, and the relentless expectations and demands on them to struggle, resist, and to facilitate the survival of African-American culture and community.

November 1972. The Vietnam War is rumored to be drawing to a close, and for sixteen-year-old Paul Landon, the end can't come soon enough. The end will mean his older brother Chris, the family's golden child, returning home from the Army for good. But while home on leave, Chris entrusts Paul with a secret: He's gay. And when Chris is killed in action, Paul is beset by grief and guilt, haunted by knowledge he can't share. That summer, Paul is forced to work at his family's pet supply store. Worse, he must train a new employee, JJ O'Neil, a gay college freshman. But though Paul initially dislikes JJ for being everything he's not--self-confident, capable, ambitious--he finds himself learning from him. Not just about how to handle the anxious, aggressive dogs JJ so effortlessly calms and trains, but how to stand up for himself--even when it means standing against his father, his friends, and his own fears. Through JJ, Paul finally begins to glimpse who his brother really was--and a way toward becoming the man he wants to be. . . Praise for the novels of Robin Reardon "Stirring. . .thoughtful and convincing." --Publishers Weekly on Thinking Straight "A compelling story well worth your time. . .Reardon is an author to watch." --Bart Yates, author of The Brothers Bishop on A Secret Edge

A Question of Manhood: A Reader in Black Men's History and Masculinity, is the first anthology of historical studies focused on themes and issues central to the construction of Black masculinities. The editors identified these essays from among several hundred articles published in recent years in leading American history journals and academic periodicals. Volume II picks up where volume I left off, continuing to focus on gender by examining the lives of African American men in the tumultuous period following the Civil War through the end of the nineteenth century. The writings included in volume two cover themes in the lives of black men that touch on leadership, work and the professions, family and community, sports and the military, and the image of black men in the larger society.

"A Question of Manhood" is the first anthology of historical studies focused on themes and issues central to the construction of Black masculinities. The editors identified these essays from among several hundred articles published in recent years in leading American history journals and academic periodicals. Each piece illuminates an important dimension of the complex array of Black male experiences as workers, artists, warriors, and leaders in both slave and free communities in the centuries and decades prior to the end of slavery in the United States. The introduction offers a gendered perspective on, and a race and class framework for the future study of, Black men's history. The introduction weaves the salient points made in each of the historical essays into a fresh narrative of Black male efforts to construct their individual life and community-sustaining identities. Black manhood was shaped not only in relation to Black womanhood, but was variously nurtured and challenged, honed and transformed against a backdrop of white male power and domination, and the relentless expectations and demands on them to struggle, resist, and to facilitate the survival of African-American culture and community.

Spanning the era from the American Revolution to the Civil War, these nine pathbreaking original essays explore the unexpected, competing, or contradictory ways in which southerners made sense of manhood. Employing a rich variety of methodologies, the contributors look at southern masculinity within African American, white, and Native American communities; on the frontier and in towns; and across boundaries of class and age. Until now, the emerging subdiscipline of southern masculinity studies has been informed mainly by conclusions drawn from research on how the planter class engaged issues of honor, mastery, and patriarchy. But what about men who didn’t own slaves or were themselves enslaved? These essays illuminate the mechanisms through which such men negotiated with overarching conceptions of masculine power. Here the reader encounters Choctaw elites struggling to maintain manly status in the market economy, black and white artisans forging rival communities and competing against the gentry for social recognition, slave men on the southern frontier balancing community expectations against owner domination, and men in a variety of military settings acting out community expectations to secure manly status. As Southern Manhood brings definition to an emerging subdiscipline of southern history, it also pushes the broader field in new directions. All of the essayists take up large themes in antebellum history, including southern womanhood, the advent of consumer culture and market relations, and the emergence of sectional conflict.

In speaking about the contents of this writing, warriors will find a large collection of essential thinking and working tools. In recognizing that you can bring a man to knowledge but you cant make him think, this think book is full of timeless wisdom and battle tested lessons which can assist those who recognize that we are at war and their need to submit themselves to the Akobens call. It offers a generous collection of personal thoughts, fictional knowledge, challenges, motivations and concrete affirmations which can guide warriors toward building and strengthening their character. If studied well, it can even assist the unsure in finding more productive ways to calibrate their desire to better reflect the depth of both the demand that they be Afrikan and creatively envision victory (Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti). In writing this book, Baba Imhotep Asis Fatiu has added to the ongoing dialogue about African manhood. His insights are on point. His perspective of African manhood is brilliant and is a must study for anyone interested in African manhood. This is a fascinating book (Anonymous).

“Men who do not turn to face their own pain are too often prone to inflict it on others.” -The Minister Of Manhood The problem isn’t that you don’t have any game, the problem isn’t that you’re alpha or beta, the problem is that you don’t have any solid principles of manhood that you can stand on. So because you don’t know and have any clear manhood principles that you can stand on, you’ll find yourself making some incredibly detrimental early mistakes that are not healthy for yourself or your future. If you’ve never been taught what a man really is and given solid manhood principles to stand on, you’ll find yourself compromising yourself and then later hating yourself for compromising principles you never new existed. The First key to being the man you want to understanding that you can’t improve yourself by yourself. You can only gradually develop and grow into a new and evolved man with the right guidance and information. A boy grows internally into a man and the external parts he desires follows naturally. You can’t improve yourself with only the skills you have today. So let’s take the journey from boy to man together. Heres just a few of the manhood principles we’ll discuss: -What Really Is Manhood? -How To Become a High Value Man -The 4 Stages Of Manhood And Which Stage You’re In -8 Things A Man Needs Before A Woman -The Effects Of Not Having A Dad Around -How To Master Your Money Like A Man -How A Man Uses Social Media -Why A Mature Man Is Okay Being Single -Why A Man Chooses Purpose Over Pussy And Much More………..