Loving, enraged, wounded, heroic. These are our fathers, our black fathers. In startlingly beautiful prose, poetry, and fiction some of our most gifted writers pay tribute to the complex relationship between sons, daughters, and the first and most important man in their lives.

Some search for their fathers in painful memories that haunt them from childhood through adolescence into their own parenthood; others celebrate their fathers' lives and the gifts their fathers gave them and their own children. Despite the enormous range of experiences, each writer affirms the central role this relationship has played in their lives.