Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs

WHY FATHERS CRY AT NIGHT

Kwame Alexander

A Memoir in Love Poems, Recipes, Letters, and Remembrances

A new memoir and collection of love poems by New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Medalist winner Kwame Alexander.

In a powerfully intimate and non-traditional (or "new-fashioned") memoir, Kwame Alexander shares snapshots of a man learning how to love. He takes us through stories of his parents: from being awkward newlyweds in the sticky Chicago summer of 1967, to the sometimes-confusing ways they showed their love for him. He explores his own relationships - his difficulties as a newly wedded, 22-year-old father, and the precariousness of his early marriage working in a jazz club with his first second wife. Alexander attempts to deal with the grief of his mother's recent passing and shares the solace he found in learning how to perfect her famous fried chicken dish. With an open heart, Alexander weaves together memories of his past to try and understand his greatest love: his daughters.

Full of heartfelt reminisces, family recipes, love poems, and personal letters, Why Fathers Cry at Night inspires bravery and vulnerability in every reader who has experienced the reckless passion, heartbreak, failure and joy that define the whirlwind woes and wonders of love.

Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, publisher, and New York Times Bestselling author of 36 books, including SWING, BECOMING MUHAMMAD ALI, co-authored with James Patterson, BOOKED, which was longlisted for the National Book Award, REBOUND, which was shortlisted for prestigious UK Carnegie Medal, The Caldecott Medal and Newbery Honor-winning picture book, THE UNDEFEATED, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, and, his NEWBERY medal-winning middle grade novel, THE CROSSOVER. A regular contributor to NPR's Morning Edition, Kwame is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, The Coretta Scott King Author Honor, Three NAACP Image Award Nominations, and the 2017 Inaugural Pat Conroy Legacy Award. In 2018, he founded the publishing imprint VERSIFY, and opened the Barbara E. Alexander Memorial Library and Health Clinic in Ghana, as a part of LEAP for Ghana, an international literacy program he co-founded. He is the writer and executive producer of THE CROSSOVER TV series on Disney Plus. His new television show launches around the world on April 5th on Disney Plus with much marketing and visibility planned.

Available products
Book Published 2023-05-23 by Little Brown

Comments

Kwame Alexander serves us morsels of memory, music, and mouth-watering love - not just love that sings and swings but also the kind that fractures and stings.

Written with candor, warmth, and heart-wrenching grace, Why Fathers Cry at Night is nothing short of a marvel, animating humanity's most important questions: What does it mean to grieve, to have the courage to surrender, to find a home in this tumultuous world, and to learn to love again? With radiance and poetic precision, Kwame Alexander's words will remind you of art's infinite sustenance. As soon as I turned the last page, I started again.

Part cookbook, part jazz concert. 100% a deep and moving lovesong of a memoir.

Like most men, Kwame Alexander was shaped by a world that told him a man should only cry in the dark, where his tears would be hidden. His memoir in stories, poems, and recipes, Why Fathers Cry at Night, serves as a guide for every man in how to show tears and disappointments in the open and not just under the veil of darkness. This book is a brave monument to love, loss, and life by a man whose cries in the night helped him to grow and grieve. On every page, Kwame Alexander's words compel the reader to examine their hearts and actions toward the ones they love.

Kwame Alexander's memoir Why Fathers Cry At Night is an unflinchingly honest, heartachingly gorgeous love poem to his family. Kwame reveals how an everyday occurrence has profound emotion with the deft hand of a master. He tells his story and we reflect on our own. I cried, I laughed, I savored each word.