Available:*
Library | Item Type | Item Barcode | Call Number | Current Location |
---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Harris Branch | Book | 33028012094738 | 921 M5311 2021 | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
A deeply personal exploration of fatherhood, addiction, and resiliency from Craig Melvin, news anchor of NBC's Today show.
For Craig Melvin this book is more an investigation than a memoir. It's an opportunity to better understand his father; to interrogate his family's legacy of addiction and despair but also transformation and redemption; and to explore the challenges facing all dads--including Craig himself, a father of two young children.
Growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, Craig had a fraught relationship with his father. Lawrence Melvin was a distant, often absent parent due to his drinking as well as his job working the graveyard shift at a postal facility. Watching sports and tinkering on Lawrence's beloved (but unreliable) 1973 Pontiac LeMans were two ways father and son connected, but as Lawrence's drinking spiraled out of control, their bond was stretched to the breaking point. Fortunately, Craig had a loving, fiercely protective mother who held the family together. He also had a series of surrogate father figures in his life--uncles, teachers, workplace mentors--who by their examples helped him figure out the kind of person and father he wanted to be.
Pops is the story of all these men--and of the inspiring fathers Craig has met reporting his "Dads Got This Series" on the Today show. Pops is also the story of Craig and Lawrence Melvin's long journey to reconciliation and understanding, and of how all these experiences and encounters have informed Craig's understanding of his own role as a dad.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus 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.
Table of Contents
Introduction Being There | p. 1 |
Chapter 1 Where I'm Coming From | p. 11 |
Chapter 2 Dad and Mom and Me | p. 41 |
Chapter 3 Role Models, Mentors, and the Ghost | p. 67 |
Chapter 4 College, Climbing The Ladder, and Love | p. 93 |
Chapter 5 Dads (Including Occasionally Me) Got This | p. 119 |
Chapter 6 Brothers | p. 151 |
Chapter 7 "Who is this Guy? | p. 171 |
Chapter 8 "I'm Here" | p. 191 |
Acknowledgments | p. 197 |