Raising Fences by Michael Datcher BUY IT NOW

INTRODUCTION
In Raising Fences, Michael Datcher offers a view of young black men seldom seen in the mediamen 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 desireand the desires of other black men he knowsto 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.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1.  Of the thirty families who were Michael Datcher’s neighbors in a Long Beach, California, apartment building in the mid-seventies, Datcher writes, “I never saw a father living in a household. I never even saw one visit.” Disappointed at having been abandoned by their fathers, Datcher and his friends fell into a macho sort of posturing to protect them from their hurt feelings. Discuss the many manifestations of this in the neighborhood and in Datcher himself. How does Datcher link this “epidemic of fatherhood failure” to the lack of hope that arises in the inner city?

  2.  The ghost of the father he never knew haunts the author throughout these pages. Datcher writes about his longing for marriage, fatherhood, and a stable family, but his actions are not always consistent with these goals. Why do you think it is so difficult for him to become the responsible man that he wants to be?

  3.  Discuss the way in which Datcher’s first brush with the law forms his feelings toward police officers. To what extent do you think that our prejudices are formed in response to other people’s biases? Do you feel it is a cycle that is doomed to continue?

  4.  Discuss the role of community in Datcher’s life. What are some of the communities to which he belongs during his childhood and adulthood? Are their influences positive or negative? How does each contribute to his sense of identity?

  5.  Why do you think Datcher became so intensely involved with the Church of Christ? What did the Church give him that had been lacking in his life? What conflicts did Datcher’s Church membership create? Did you come to see the Church as a cult or a religion? Did the Church of Christ serve a constructive or destructive purpose in Datcher’s development as a man?

  6.  In an argument with Datcher over whether or not to get an abortion, Camille says, “You tryin so hard to get me down to the clinic so you can protect your little dream. Well, I have dreams, too.” Did you take sides in this argument and, if so, did your feelings change when Nicole’s paternity was revealed? Why do you think Camille lied to Datcher about her baby’s paternity? Do you think that anything positive resulted from her lie?

  7.  Datcher’s friendships with other men play an important role in his life. In Raising Fences, he describes a number of close male friendships he has had at different times in his life. Name a few of Datcher’s closest male friends and discuss the lessons he learned from each of them, both positive and negative. How has following their examples made Datcher “a better human being,” as he claims on page 234? At the World Stage Writer’s Workshop, the male participants have rare moments of catharsis and talk openly about their lives. Do you think that a group like this would benefit men you know? Why or why not?

  8.  Datcher describes coordinating the World Stage Writer’s Workshop as his “chance to turn some of the hurt into art.” Discuss the role poetry plays in Datcher’s life and in the lives of the other men and women who participate in the Workshop. What does poetry give them other than an outlet for difficult emotions? Why do you think Datcher decided to propose to Jenoyne with a poem, in front of their friends from the World Stage?

  9.  Tyrone Tillman has overcome his disadvantaged background and is, at age twenty-seven, considered a “wunderkind” by Datcher and his friends. He is rich, smart, successful, and generous. He appears to have everythingand yet his accomplishments are shadowed by a violent and cruel side to his personality. How do you reconcile Tillman’s anger with his generosity? What do you make of the following lines, from Datcher’s poem about Tillman: “this is where he is safest./ where beauty is in the black eye/of the beholder./ manhood is easy here.”?

  10.  At the end of Raising Fences, although Datcher refers wistfully to the father who will never come to show him how to be a man, there is a sense that he has “outgrown the dervish of want and need” through determination and desire. What kind of man has Datcher become by the end of the book? Will fatherlessness continue to define him? Or, in marrying the woman he loves, has he broken the cycle of abandonment he feared?

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