Air traffic : a memoir of ambition and manhood in America

Resource Information

The work Air traffic : a memoir of ambition and manhood in America represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Newburyport Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Air traffic : a memoir of ambition and manhood in America

Title remainder

a memoir of ambition and manhood in America

Statement of responsibility

Gregory Pardlo

Creator

• Pardlo, Gregory

Author

• Pardlo, Gregory

Subject

• Autobiographies
• BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Literary
• BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Personal Memoirs
• Fathers and sons -- United States
• African American authors -- 20th century -- Biography
• Pardlo, Gregory
• Pardlo, Gregory -- Family
• LITERARY COLLECTIONS -- Essays
• Authors, American -- 20th century -- Family relationships

Genre

• Biography
• Autobiographies

Language

eng

Summary

"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, his first work of prose: a deeply felt memoir of a family's bonds and a meditation on race, addiction, fatherhood, ambition, and American culture The Pardlos were an average, middle-class African American family living in a New Jersey Levittown: charismatic Gregory Sr., an air traffic controller, his wife, and their two sons, bookish Greg Jr. and musical-talent Robbie. But when "Big Greg" loses his job after participating in the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Strike of 1981, he becomes a disillusioned, toxic, looming presence in the household--and a powerful rival for young Greg. While Big Greg succumbs to addiction and exhausts the family's money, Greg Jr. rebels--he joins a boot camp for prospective Marines, follows a woman to Denmark, drops out of college again and again, and yields to alcoholism. Years later, he falls for a beautiful, no-nonsense woman named Ginger and becomes a parent himself. Then, he finally grapples with the irresistible yet ruinous legacy of masculinity he inherited from his father. In chronicling his path to recovery and adulthood--Gregory Pardlo gives us a compassionate, loving ode to his father, to fatherhood, and to the frustrating-yet-redemptive ties of family, as well as a scrupulous, searing examination of how African American manhood is shaped by contemporary American life"--

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Biography type

autobiography

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

• 811/.6
• B

Illustrations

• illustrations
• plates

Index

no index present

LC call number

PS3616.A737

LC item number

Z46 2018

Literary form

non fiction