Air traffic
Subtitle: a memoir of ambition and manhood in America
By: Gregory Pardlo
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 253
ISBN-13: 9781524731762; 9780525432210
Copyright date: 2018
Subjects: African American authors; Family; Family relationships; Biography; Fathers and sons; American Authors
Description: "From the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, his first work of prose: a deeply felt memoir of a family's bonds and a meditation on race, addiction, fatherhood, ambition, and American culture The Pardlos were an average, middle-class African American family living in a New Jersey Levittown: charismatic Gregory Sr., an air traffic controller, his wife, and their two sons, bookish Greg Jr. and musical-talent Robbie. But when "Big Greg" loses his job after participating in the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Strike of 1981, he becomes a disillusioned, toxic, looming presence in the household--and a powerful rival for young Greg. While Big Greg succumbs to addiction and exhausts the family's money, Greg Jr. rebels--he joins a boot camp for prospective Marines, follows a woman to Denmark, drops out of college again and again, and yields to alcoholism. Years later, he falls for a beautiful, no-nonsense woman named Ginger and becomes a parent himself. Then, he finally grapples with the irresistible yet ruinous legacy of masculinity he inherited from his father. In chronicling his path to recovery and adulthood--Gregory Pardlo gives us a compassionate, loving ode to his father, to fatherhood, and to the frustrating-yet-redemptive ties of family, as well as a scrupulous, searing examination of how African American manhood is shaped by contemporary American life"--
Table of contents: title: An introduction: Rt. 66; title: The up-to-daters club; title: Student union; title: Loser; title: What is your quest?; title: Air traffic; title: The minority business consortium; title: Cartography; title: A moving violation; title: Marine boy; title: The wreck of the conquest; title: He ain't heavy; title: "Hurrah for Schoelcher!"; title: Colored people's time; title: Private school; title: Tolle, Lege; title: Behind the wheel; title: The strip; title: On Intervention.