The author, a Rhodes scholar and combat veteran, analyzes factors that influenced him as well as another man of the name and from the same neighborhood who was drawn into a life of drugs and crime and ended up serving life in prison, focusing on the influence of relatives, mentors, and social expectations that could have led either of them on different paths.
Profiles eight African-American male writers: James Baldwin, Charles Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Ralph Ellison, Alex Haley, Chester Himes, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright.
