Raising Fences: A Black Man's Love Story

Raising Fences: A Black Man's Love Story
by Michael Datcher

Raising Fences: A Black Man's Love Story
List Price: $23.95
Our Price: $6.99
You Save: $16.96 (71%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Michael Datcher
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-03-05
ISBN: 1573221716
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover

Book Reviews of Raising Fences: A Black Man's Love Story

Book Review: Moving memoir of a man making his way
Summary: 5 Stars

This was a moving story of a man who as a young boy desired to have a life that included a wife and family with a white picket fence. How does a boy born of rape, but raised by a loving woman and family, but in near poverty in urban Los Angles achieve such a dream?

Datcher methodically takes us on this journey of truth and discovery from his days as a young precocious kid who loved books and language and had a good business sense. He and his friends had businesses, one of stealing bikes and refurbishing them. His academics eventually got him into schools where he was exposed to white kids of higher economic levels. In high school he developed a double life, one at school and another in the neighborhood. He also devloped a stutter but challenged himself by debating. Despite a high school teacher telling him that he should stick with one of the state colleges because U.C. was too tough, he went on to U.C. Berkeley, and pursued his studies. Along the way, he found became a born-again Christian eventually shedding his friends but never completely at peace with the philosophy. He eventually ended back in southern California in grad school and leaving his religion behind, at least that religion that had him tied up in indecisiveness.

He eventually became reacquainted with the black community embracing the artists world and started a writing workshop. And then he met a woman that threw his world into turmoil. The very thing he didn't want, an unwanted, unplanned child was on the way. How he handled this fork in the road over the next year and the surprising turn is a story many young many live. Meanwhile his career is building as he gets becomes a multi-published writer of poetry and essays. He eventually meets the woman who becomes his wife and their love story is beautifully detailed.

This is a must read for young men as a testament to the principles of a man who held to his dreams and comes out a shining example of a man who comes into his own.

Summary of Raising Fences: A Black Man's Love Story

Immediate, dramatic, illuminating-through his own riveting story, Michael Datcher, a young black poet, argues passionately for a black man's right to security, family, and love.

In Raising Fences, Michael Datcher offers a view of young black men seldom seen in the media-men who long for loving, stable marriages, fatherhood, and homes in safe neighborhoods. In this emotionally raw and intimate narrative, Datcher reflects on his fatherless childhood in inner-city Los Angeles, his attraction to local gangs, his promiscuity, and, at times, his lack of faith. But he also writes of his deep desire-and the desires of other black men he knows-to escape a cycle that deprives children of what they need most and creates empty shells of grown men. Here is the story of one man's success in overcoming the obstacles thrown at him from birth. It is a powerful case for fathers, for family, for racial communication and understanding. And it is also a love story, a story of courage and faith. Its message is one we need to hear now more than ever before.

Authors Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Authors Books
Bloomsbury Recalled ImageBloomsbury Recalled
by Quentin Bell
Columbia University Press; Published: 1997-01-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.40
Price in other shops: $29.00
William Tyndale: A Biography ImageWilliam Tyndale: A Biography
by David Daniell
Yale University Press; Published: 1994-11-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $62.92
Neither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America ImageNeither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish America
by Kathleen Ann Myers
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops: $45.00
Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics) ImageStorm of Steel (Penguin Classics)
by Ernst Jünger
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops: $16.00
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life ImageSurprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
by C.S. Lewis
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 1995-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.22
Price in other shops: $18.00
Roughing It (The Penguin American Library) ImageRoughing It (The Penguin American Library)
by Mark Twain
Penguin Classics; Published: 1981-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.65
Price in other shops: $16.00
Life Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98 ImageLife Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98
by George Dawson, Richard Glaubman
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2001-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.55
Price in other shops: $15.00
Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives) ImageShakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)
by Bill Bryson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops: $13.99
The Professor and the Madman CD ImageThe Professor and the Madman CD
by Simon Winchester
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-10-04; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $8.46
Price in other shops: $14.95
Alexander Hamilton: A Life ImageAlexander Hamilton: A Life
by Willard Sterne Randall
Harper; Published: 2003-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.86
Price in other shops: $32.50
Similar Books and other products
Southland ImageSouthland
by Nina Revoyr
Akashic Books; Published: 2008-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.75
Price in other shops: $15.95
I Love Yous Are for White People: A Memoir (P.S.) ImageI Love Yous Are for White People: A Memoir (P.S.)
by Lac Su
Harper Perennial; Published: 2009-05-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.89
Price in other shops: $14.99
The Madonnas of Echo Park: A Novel ImageThe Madonnas of Echo Park: A Novel
by Brando Skyhorse
Free Press; Published: 2011-02-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.83
Price in other shops: $14.00
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories