Newspaper Article

School of Hard Knocks

Reviewed by Darryl Cox

2001

Overview

Raising Fences recounts the efforts of Los Angeles-based writer and poet [Michael Datcher] to latch onto this marketing wave while it still contains enough bounce to put him safely ashore. The story that he initially claims to want to write about is of the little-known and seldom-recognized \"picket-fence dreams\" of young black urban men who are eager not for the mean, pointed streets of the 'hood but for the more rounded cul-de-sacs of middle-class suburban communities and the responsibilities of being husbands and fathers. To his credit, Datcher realizes that this particular metaphor has lost some of its potency over the past few decades, particularly among white Americans, but it is still \"secretly riding the bench in black neighborhoods nationwide.\" There are a few problems with this particular approach. The first is that Datcher is not a particularly thoughtful or dramatically interesting writer. At one point, for example, he expresses a desire for a woman with \"a love for books so strong she gets [sexually excited] reading Fanon.\" Political revolutionaries probably have as great a capacity for love and an appreciation for the pleasures of Eros as any other group of people, but I seriously doubt that reading Frantz Fanon's books could ever actually sexually arouse any revolutionary, male or female.

• Publisher: WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post
• Subject: Autobiographies / Books-titles / Datcher, Michael / Fisher, Antwone Quenton / Multiple review / Nonfiction