Part of my job includes processing books, and that is what I was doing today. Putting labels and security tags on books is pretty easy but it takes a bit longer than it should and you can’t rush it so that you don’t make a mess. I often drool (figuratively) over books I’d like to read while I’m doing this, but rarely do I open a book to read it. I made the mistake of doing that today and had a very hard time putting the book down.
This is the book that grabbed me: There’s No Traffic in the Extra Mile by Rickey Minor. I’m not an American Idol fan, never have been, but I found myself reading this book by the show’s music director. It started with the lessons he learned in math class, then I flipped to a short reading on his beginnings in Louisiana, the ways he learned to invest in his first bands and I was really enjoying how he related straight forward advice from his life. Then, I began thinking about the ‘how to be a man’ books that are filling shelves by Black male authors. I don’t know if other ethnicities are producing these books that probably began with Hill Harpers Letters to a Black boy and include other books by Kirk Franklin, Antoine Fisher, Kevin Powell and on and on.
One of my student helpers came into the media center shortly after I set the book aside, and I mentioned There’s no traffic to him, thinking he might be interested. He had been a fan of “American Idol’ but was not familiar with Minor. In fact, my student stated that he would rather read a motivational book by someone like Donald Trump who has been a success. DUDE!! Do you not see the car on the cover?? Do you think just anyone gets to be the music producer on American Idol??
Which takes me to the point I’m trying to get to: can reading a book guide a young boy to manhood?
What book has deeply touched, inspired or changed you?
Cotton Quilts Edi 
Edi, I like your Male Monday column.
I’m sorry to hear that the young man misunderstood the value of Rickey Minor’s presence as a successful black man who has written a book about that successful journey. I wonder if this has to do with what the boy has been exposed to that is deemed “valuable” and “successful” for black men. He could not readily relate to a music producer because that is a behind-the-scenes kind of job. I believe it’s a by-product of the mainstream culture we live in: if it’s not out front, it does not count.
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I think a young boy needs more than a book to guide them through adulthood just like a young girl would. I think books can and do change the way we think about the world around us. So many books have and continue to change and inspire me such as Black Candle by Chitra Divakaruni, which is a book of poetry and Beloved by Toni Morrison.
I definitely agree with Vanessa’s comment. Nowadays society place so much glamor on celebrities that it’s easy to forget about the people who make money and aren’t in the spotlight.
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I keep forgetting to mention that the Male Monday meme began with Ari @ Reading in Color!
Vasilly, Black Candle must be an awesome collection of poetry!
I shouldn’t be such a cynic. These books can also be excellent vehicles for adults to discuss topics with young men. The book themselves might not do the trick, but they’d be great in a discussion group.
Minors book is really good, I could seen teens reading it on their own.
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Edi, I hope books can help get boys to manhood. One I enjoyed last year was CBS/Sixty Minutes correspondent Byron Pitts’ Step Out on Nothing: How Faith and Family Helped Me Conquer Life’s Challenges. Certainly a book teenagers could read–and fits into the self-help category. Pitts was functionally illiterate (sounds like he had something like dyslexia), despite years of school, until about the fifth grade.
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