The First Part Last
This small, short book packs a powerful punch and how I overlooked it for so long, surprises me. With only 132 pages, this book is about reality, it spoke my song and although it was not a complicated story, its message was clear. Bobby’s life changed on his sixteenth birthday when Nia, his girlfriend announced he was going to be a father. Yeah, Bobby a father at the age of sixteen. The books titles alternate between “then” and “now” and eventually they meet up and it’s Bobby who had made the choices he is living with. With “now” we read about Bobby talking on the responsibilities of fatherhood: his struggles, his reflections on life and those moments of fatherhood that put a smile on his face. As we read about “then” we begin with how the two teens struggle with the decisions that need to be made now, as they begin to see that their road ahead will not be easy. They think they know what they are headed into and they know that they learn as they go but being a teen, this new responsibility is huge and that has to come first. Reading both segments was real; it hit home as I once walked those streets and I know how hard it can be. I have to applaud the author on not making this life a glamorous one but telling it just like it is.
