Man Up: Cracking the Code of Modern Manhood - Hardcover

Gomez, Carlos Andres

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1592407781 ISBN 13: 9781592407781

Publisher: Gotham, 2012

Synopsis

Inspired by the award-winning poet and actor’s acclaimed one-man play, a powerful coming-of-age memoir that reimagines masculinity for the twenty-first-century male.

Award-winning poet, actor, and writer Carlos Andrés Gómez is a supremely gifted storyteller with a captivating voice whose power resonates equally on the live stage and on the page. In one of his most moving spoken-word poems, Gómez recounts a confrontation he once had after accidentally bumping into another man at a club. Just as they were about to fight, Gómez experienced an unexplainable surge of emotion that made his eyes well up with tears. Everyone at the scene jumped back, as if crying, or showing vulnerability, was the most insane thing that Gómez could possibly have done.

Like many men in our society, Gómez grew up believing that he had to be ready to fight at all times, treat women as objects, and close off his emotional self. It wasn’t until he discovered acting that he began to see the true cost of squelching one’s emotions—and how aggression dominates everything that young males are taught.

Statistics on graduation rates, employment, and teen and young-adult suicide make it clear that the young males in our society are at a crisis point, but Gómez seeks to reverse these ominous trends by sharing the lessons that he has learned. Like Hill Harper’s Letters to a Young Brother, Man Up will be an agent for positive change, galvanizing men—but also mothers, girlfriends, wives, and sisters—to rethink and reimagine the way all men interact with women, deal with violence, handle fear, and express emotion.

About this title

About the Author

Carlos Andrés Gómez is an award-winning poet, actor, and writer. A former social worker in Harlem and the south Bronx and a former public school teacher in Philadelphia and Manhattan, Gomez has performed at over 200 colleges and universities and has toured across North America, Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and named Artist of the Year at the 2009 Promoting Outstanding Writers Awards, he is a two-time International Poetry Slam Champion and two-time National Poetry Slam Finalist. He appeared on HBO’s “Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam” and co-starred in Spike Lee’s film Inside Man alongside Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, and Clive Owen.

Reviews

Based on his one-man play of the same title, performance artist and poet Gomez’s first book reassesses faith, fear, sex, art, heroism, war, and other aspects of modern manhood. The ambitious memoir reveals a sensitive yet rugged man haunted by gender and racial stereotypes and his artistic mission to quash both. Born in New York City to a Colombian father employed by the UN and a fair-skinned, blue-eyed academic mother, young Gomez and his family lived in Switzerland, Brazil, Cyprus, and various American cities, blurring his understanding of racial distinctions. But after his parents divorced, and he settled in the States, his masculinity and mixed ethnicity became problematic. Gomez recalls a prepubescent “non-talk” with his father about sex and a defining memory of how, on the brink of a fight at a club, he brought himself to tears by imagining all the significant men in his life. Interspersed with his poems and excerpts from his play, Gomez’s energetic debut well may be an inspiration for every man and man-to-be who is “interested not so much in being but in becoming.” --Jonathan Fullmer

Edition details

• Publisher: Gotham
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1592407781
• ISBN 13: 9781592407781
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304