Be a man

I love that the start of this book is the author's reflection that he has watching another father and son. He sees a little boy, Tuan, crying in public and the boy doesn't stop and his father starts gripping him tightly urging him to just stop crying rather than showing the kid some tenderness. Unfortunately, Brian Broome's dad did something very similar to what Tuan's dad was doing on the bus which caused him to reflect. After he would get a spanking he would continue to cry and his father would come up to him and tell him to stop like it was just that easy. Rather than showing their sons tenderness both were insisting that "men don't cry"?!

I love that Brian Broome addresses what it is to be a man in today's society even with a broken father who lacks tenderness. I guess not really how to be a man but how he has learned to be a black man in today's society and even more than that a black gay man <3 <3 <3