A Fatherless Child: Autobiographical Perspectives of African American Men

Green investigates the impact of fatherlessness on racial and gender identity formation by closely examining four works Langston Hughes s The Big Sea, Richard Wright s Black Boy, Malcolm X s The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Barack Obama s Dreams from My Father. These four men recall feeling the pressure and responsibility of caring for their mothers, resisting public displays of care, and desiring a loving, noncontentious relationship with their fathers. Feeling vulnerable to forces they may have identified as detrimental to their status as black men, they use autobiography as a tool for healing, a way to confront that vulnerability and to claim a lost power associated with their lost fathers.