Raising Fences: A Black Man's Love Story.

Raising Fences: A Black Man's Love Story by Michael Datcher Riverhead Books, $23.95, March 2001, ISBN 1-573-22171-6

"Epic" is an accurate description of Michael Datcher's accomplished memoir, Raising Fences: A Black Man's Love Story. Datcher, reared under the watchful eye of his mother, spent his early years in a Long Beach, California housing project where "I never saw a father living in a household. I never even saw one visit." The momentum of this book is launched by Datcher's quest to structure an identity within the framework of his beginnings. However, do not be alarmed. This is not the stereotypical ghetto-to-fabulous melodrama of some "hood rat", propelled forward on large doses of ego and testosterone, fashioning a new self from the mysterious underworld of the inner city. The people caught on the pages of Fences are recognizable, human and encumbered by insecurities and fears that make them behave in cruel, selfish ways (Datcher included). But Datcher also shows us their strengths--those attributes and indefatigable spirits that produce phenomenal people from hard, harsh conditions. Most accomplished is Datcher's depiction of black men who are not afraid of emotional confrontations, who have honest, heart-felt revelations and emerge triumphantly from such struggles. Out of the World Stages Writer's Workshop, a place of words and mysticism, these brothers--Datcher foremost among them--construct friendships and a conviction in their communities and one another that is marvelous in its range of depth, it's' images of black men rarely portrayed in today's media. In Fences, Datcher has offered us his salvation. It is a gift, a treasure to prosper from and pass on.

Doug Jones is a novelist and graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University.