Review by Kirkus Book Review
The Today Show host chronicles his family's story through dark times and great obstacles. Melvin looks back at his upbringing in Columbia, South Carolina, during the 1980s and 1990s. Though he focuses on his relationship with his father, many other members of his large family play important supporting roles in the memoir. Melvin is in his early 40s, but he has enough experience and wisdom to be able to see his father through a very different lens than when he was younger, when his father's absences, sullenness, and emotional distance troubled him. Gradually, he learned that his father was a severe alcoholic--and not just an alcoholic, but addiction prone in general, as when he lost himself to video poker, "the crack cocaine of gambling" (now outlawed in the state), squandering much of his paycheck. Melvin has a canny way of putting readers in his younger shoes, capably demonstrating his confusion and need for approval and how these factors shaped his personality. He worked diligently to avoid his father's fate and become a self-confident, communicative, empathetic adult. The author also fills in the background of the "soft racism" of Columbia and what it was like for a Black family to move across the river to downtown. Many members of his extended family move in and out of the narrative, each bringing their own quirks, strengths, and weaknesses. But it all comes back to his Pops, and Melvin won't settle for a simple answer: "hindered by his own family history, his own parents' shortcomings and dearth of resources, his lack of a good role model…the systematic and overt racism he faced…the legacy of alcoholism--and likely an undiagnosed underlying depression." As the author grappled with his family's legacy, he devised his own philosophy about child rearing: "You want to make their path as smooth as possible, but without spoiling them rotten." An emotionally and atmospherically deep celebration of a family that has stuck together through thin and thinner. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
