Living to Tell about It

For this book, Dawsey, a 27-year-old Detroit native and writer for the Detroit News, visited nine cities to interview black men aged 15 to 24. Mixing vignettes with his own musings, the author addresses such subjects as childhood, relationships with parents, respect, work, spirituality and violence. Given Dawsey's own urban upbringing and his ``ground level'' black nationalism-``to be Black in America is to be political''-there's a hard edge to this book; most interviewees are from the 'hood, not the suburbs or the country-though a few have become professionals-and Dawsey warily evaluates subjects he considers on the edge of sellout, like a black cop, while uncritically accepting a rapper who claims ``the white man is the devil.'' Given that, Dawsey's own anger-at a father who abandoned him and at a country that discounts his life-has fueled a deep sensitivity to the daily struggles of his peers, and he rightly sees the ghetto drug economy as a business, part of how black youth pursue the American dreams of individualism and wealth. In his chapter on sex, he gives voice to a gay man and a Christian virgin and has harsh words for the misogynist strain in inner-city black male culture. (Jan.)