Nickel Boys, Between The World And Me, And Notes Of A Native Son

Boys Made Out Of Clay
A black boy's first teacher is their father. A person who came together to form a life and stayed to develop a person. These fathers mold their sons with lessons and morals from their own experiences that build the character and mindset of their sons far into their adult lives- teaching their black sons how to navigate a world against them and showing them how to look at the world with hope. When a child loses a father to abandonment, death, or neglect, that lesson goes untold and taken with them, leaving that child lost and confused in an unjust world. The authors of The Nickel Boys, Between the World and Me, and Notes of a Native Son depict the struggles of instilling or accepting their fathers' morals, protection, and

Turner's violent and uninvolved father figures leave him unable to be vulnerable and lead him to become wholly independent, "Turner last saw his father when he was three years old. After that, the man was the wind…Ishmael was a man of secret menace who stored up violence like a battery; Turner learned to recognize these men from then on" Turner’s trauma leads to him developing an individualist mindset as a coping mechanism to his violent and untrusting upbringing, further isolating him from his peers. While the inherited stubbornness of Baldwin and his father leads to an antagonistic relationship that Baldwin regrets, "We had got on badly, partly because we shared, in our different fashions, the vice of stubborn pride. When he died, I realized I had hardly ever spoken to him. When he had been dead a long time, I began to wish I had." Baldwin's inability to reconcile with his father before death haunts him, as he knows he lost his father's knowledge of the world before he could appreciate it and can no longer rely on him for

Baldwin's father attempted to protect him from the dangers of racism through dismissals and indirect concerns, "Before the teacher came, my father took me aside to ask why she was coming, what interest she could possibly have in our house, in a boy like me...", while Ta-Nehisi Coates guides his son through the troubles that the world presents them, constantly showing his son that he is not alone in their battle, "Here is what I would like for you to know: in America, it is traditional to destroy the black body – it is heritage." Although both fathers care deeply for their sons, Coates' authoritative parenting permits in-depth discussion between the father and son, strengthening their bond-whereas Baldwin's father creates a divide between them with his authoritarian and restraining ideas of how to