Before I Forget
Before I Forget book cover

Before I Forget

Paperback – March 20, 2009

by
Price
$14.79
Format
Paperback
Pages
336
Publisher
Agate Bolden
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1932841435
Dimensions
6 x 1.11 x 9 inches
Weight
15 ounces

Description

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. In a seamless transition to fiction, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Pitts Jr. (Becoming Dad) delivers an unsettling, compelling first novel about secrets, illness, and the role of African-American men in society and family life. His absorbing story centers on unmarried father of one Mo Johnson, a faded 1970s soul star living in Baltimore, and diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's at the age of 49. Overwhelmed with regrets, and unable to confess his diagnosis, he sets out to make things right with two men long absent in his life: his teenage son, Trey, an unwed father facing armed-robbery charges; and his father, Jack, now ravaged by cancer. Mo and Trey take a cross-country road trip to visit Jack in his final days, each character a simmering cauldron of secrets, grief, and recrimination about to boil over. Unfolding like a film (big names are already attached to a possible movie adaptation), the novel takes readers to rural 1940s Mississippi, South Central L.A. in the swingin' 1950s, and present-day Las Vegas with immersing dialog and vivid, powerful imagery. Bold in spirit and scope, this is a rare, memorable debut that should net Pitts a wide new expanse of fans. PRAISE FOR LEONARD PITTS, JR.'S NOVEL BEFORE I FORGET :"Pitts is a master storyteller with a keen eye for both social trends and the human heart.” — Tananarive Due , American Book Award winner, author of Blood Colony "[ Before I Forget ] is a beautiful, tragic and riveting work." — Marilyn Dahl, Shelf Awareness --selected as one of top ten novels of 2009"In a seamless transition to fiction, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Pitts Jr. ( Becoming Dad ) delivers an unsettling, compelling first novel about secrets, illness, and the role of African-American men in society and family life.... Bold in spirit and scope, this is a rare, memorable debut that should net Pitts a wide new expanse of fans." — Publishers Weekly "A gripping story of regret, revenge, unconditional love, acceptance, and ultimately forgiveness." — Atlanta Daily World "Laced with taut dialogue and description in a journey of self-discovery and an intense multigenerational pilgrimage." — AOL Black Voices "Tough and tender, Before I Forget is the kind of novel seldom seen anymore, one that tackles the big themes [of] life, death, [and] love head-on, and is at the same time a great read." — Miami Today " Before I Forget is a man's story, and Leonard Pitts, Jr. tells it with all the truth and passion we don't always have the courage or confidence to express. I saw myself in this mighty book, strong and weak, but mostly human." — Eddie Levert, Sr. , lead singer, The O'Jays, and author of I Got Your Back: A Father and Son Keep It Real About Love, Fatherhood, Family, and Friendship "Leonard Pitt's powerful depiction of memory loss explores the complexity of the relationship between fathers and sons in an emotionally gripping, must-read journey." — Lyah Beth LeFlore , author of Last Night a DJ Saved My Life "I have been reading Leonard Pitts's work for 30 years. he is a one-of-a-kind storyteller, as he proves again with Before I Forget . This is a terrific book!" — J. Randy Taraborrelli , author of Diana: Call Her Miss Ross PRAISE FOR LEONARD PITTS, JR. :"Leonard Pitts, Jr. is the most insightful and inspiring columnist of his generation." — Tavis Smiley "He refuses to be predictable or to rest on his considerable laurels. He is funny when you think there's not a smidgen of humor to be found, enraged at the very moment we thought we no longer cared, and he shakes us up just when we're so certain we have it all figured out. In other words, he makes us better for having read him. What a gift. In sparse, often electric prose, Pitts challenges us to be bigger than we thought possible, and then shows us how to get there." — Connie Schultz, Cleveland Plain-Dealer "As a long-time reader and admirer, I find there is only one thing to question about Leonard Pitts being awarded the Pulitzer Prize: What took them so long?" — Bob Costas PRAISE FOR LEONARD PITTS, JR.'S BECOMING DAD :"This is a book about black men and fatherhood. But it is also much more....Pitts writes with a sensitivity and an eloquence that illustrate how these problems transcend race and gender. A must-read for anyone who has ever had a father--or has not." — Miami Herald

Features & Highlights

  • This powerful novel of three generations of black men bound by blood — and by histories of mutual love, fear, and frustration — gives author Leonard Pitts the opportunity to explore the painful truths of black men's lives, especially as they play out in the fraught relations of fathers and sons. As 50-year-old Mo tries to reach out to his increasingly tuned-out son Trey (who himself has become an unwed teenaged father), he realizes that the burden of grief and anger he carries over his own estranged father has everything to do with the struggles he encounters with his son. Part road novel, part character study, and part social critique, and written in compulsively readable prose,
  • Before I Forget
  • is the work of a major new voice in American fiction. Pitts knows inside and out the difficulties facing black men as they grapple with the complexities of their roles as fathers.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
60%
(222)
★★★★
25%
(93)
★★★
15%
(56)
★★
7%
(26)
★
-7%
(-27)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Time Is Not On Your Side

Before I Forget by Leonard Pitts, Jr. is a story of three generations of black men who are related by blood, but each struggles with their role of being a father and do not understand the heritage that bonds them and makes them who they are. The main character, Mo Johnson, a former soul star of the 70s, has just found out at age 49, he suffers from early-onset Alzheimer's, which will have him forget who he is before the disease kills him. This news, as expected, spins his world out-of-control. Trey, his son, at 19 also has a son, spends his time dreaming to be a rap star and has no means of supporting himself beyond what his mother and father provide to him, and he has just been arrested for robbery and murder. Jack, Mo's father, is dying of cancer and would like to see the son who has not spoken to him in 30 years, once more before he dies. While Mo's initial reaction to this request is no, the circumstances on why Mo refuses to speak to his father forces him to change his mind, as there are some things Mo needs to say before his memory is gone. So, Mo decides to embark on a trip back home to L.A. from Maryland, taking Trey with him as while Mo has supported his son financially he has not given him time and attention and wants to now spend time with his son.

Leonard Pitts weaves a wonderful story which is both painful and truthful, yet with compassion so the reader is able to view the lives of each of these characters and understand who they are. As Mo and Trey drive across country, the story unfolds in a series of flashbacks, alternating with action in the current time. The characters' voices for each of the generations were true to their times and I found myself smiling as I also heard the voices of the older and younger generations in my family. The most poignant of the storylines to me was the unfolding of the effect of Mo's early-onset Alzheimer's on him and his son, Trey.

Fathers are a major theme that affect both the major and secondary characters. The underlying question for the characters is what is a father and how do you effectively fill this role and more importantly, this book shows how black men wrestle with this issue and the different ways they come to terms with it. The author has the courage to address an issue that is on the minds of many in the black community and whether you agree with the characters' decisions or not - you will appreciate the honest portrayal.

I recommend this book to all readers who are interested in a well-written story on current topics. This is a wonderful debut novel and I look forward to reading Mr. Pitts' next book.

Reviewed by Beverly
APOOO BookClub
March 3, 2009
37 people found this helpful
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A Powerful Story

This is a book that could easily have been hard to believe. James Moses Johnsons: three of them (grandfather, father, son). Okay, so that isn't unusual. But what about the father who writes a hit song titled "Prophecy" and the son changes it a generation later to "Profit See." Oh, yes, and add this ingredient: the grandfather is near death and wishes to have his best friend shoot him while the son has purchased a rifle to end his life because he has learned he is in the early stages of Alzheimer's and not yet fifty. Oh, yes, and the 19-year-old son has been arrested for his involvement in a robbery turned bad when a killing occurs. It has all the makings of a really bad black people soap opera.
But this book is in the hands of Leonard Pitts, Junior. I am one of thousands who have read his syndicated newspaper column for years. So when I heard he had written his first novel, I had to read it as soon as possible. And it has been a wonderful ride. The dialogue is so believable. The characters are also well developed and completely believable. In many ways this could have been a stereotypical black family. Men who are very distant fathers. The grandfather with the father. And the father with the son. And, oh, yes, 19-year-old Trey (James Moses III) has a 4-year-old son who lives with the unmarried mother. It is all there. And yet it is so well developed.
This is a brilliantly conceived novel that tells a very powerful story. I highly recommend it.
14 people found this helpful
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This is a story every father should read

There isn't a blurb from Bill Cosby on the back of Leonard Pitts's first novel, "Before I Forget." But this is a cautionary tale Cosby would recommend.
In May 2004, the comedian spoke at an NAACP Legal Defense Fund banquet to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision. Cosby drew ire and hostility because he blamed the black community itself for school dropouts, crime and teen pregnancy rates.
"I'm talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you don't know he had a pistol? And where is the father ...?"
It's a question any race could ask these days. One of every 10 teenaged Florida girl got pregnant in 2007: 43 percent were white, 33 percent black, 33 percent Hispanic. In 2008, 48 percent of inmates were black, 18 percent Hispanic, 7 percent white. But the point is not ethnicity or gender, the point is that there is an epidemic of missing fathers. Mothers are doing the best they can, but in many cases, they're working and doing the parenting, all alone.
Where is the father? Indeed. One in three children live in a one-parent household.
Pitts, who won the Pulitzer Prize in the same year, took up the drumbeat with his novel about three fictional fathers. The first, Jack Johnson, was angry because he was raped and beaten while in prison. He became a drunk, and beat his wife and son.
Jack's son, Mo Johnson, turned out to be a soul singer with the stature of Marvin Gaye, but he was always on the road while his son was growing up. An indifferent father, he saw the boy once a year.
Where was the father? Indeed. Absentee fathers beget absentee fathers. Mo's boy, Trey, grew up angry. He had a great mother, but no paternal influence. At 19, he and two friends robbed a convenience store. The owner was murdered. At first, Mo blamed the boy, but then he realized the most important fact of his life - he didn't know his son.
At the same time, Mo, who has early onset Alzheimer's, got a call from his own father in California, who was dying. Mo and Trey's 6,000 mile road trip - a common literary device that worked well in Pitts's missive about Everydad and Everyson - gave them the chance to finally understand each other.
"In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison," Cosby told the crowd at Howard University. "No longer is a person embarrassed because they're pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child."
Where is the outrage, Bob Dole would have asked. Indeed. It's a question we all ask occasionally, and we struggle for answers.
"In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. In the old days, you couldn't hooky school," Cosby said. Communities raised children. Moms and dads called other moms and dads, and parents knew where truant children had gone. "Parents don't know that today."
"People with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn't that a sign of something or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn't it a sign of something when she's got her dress all the way up to the crack - and got all kinds of needles and things going through her body. Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We've got to take the neighborhood back."
Where is the father? That is, indeed, the lesson Trey finally learns from his father. Trey is a teen father. His son is already 4, and his mother was murdered by her mother. This is the world in which we're living, Pitts and Cosby are saying. And instead of correcting our children when they do wrong, we're defending them.
The question both Cosby and Pitts ask is, where is our decency? Indeed. How much coarser will society become, when fewer and fewer people don't go to school, can't read, can't write, can't add or subtract, and don't care?
12 people found this helpful
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Good ebonic novel; poorly written English

I have been reading Mr. Pitts' column for years, vainly hoping that he would write a column free of fragmented sentences and paragraphs beginning with conjunctions. I finally quit hoping when I realized Mr. Pitts' disdain for the English language. He is the ultimate ebonics author. While reading this tedious novel, he doesn't write anything that is novel. He simply uses vulgarities, fragmented sentences, and his own linguistic inventions to tell the story of an Alzheimer's patient. To paraphrase Mr. Pitts, and that's the truth.
9 people found this helpful
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Before I Forget

Leonard Pitts, Jr. has the wonderful skill of taking a series of words and making an incredible sentence out of them. I have long been an admirer of the syndicated column written by Mr. Pitts--this esteem led me to purchase his novel, "Before I Forget." I was not disappointed--the author tells a story just as masterfully as he writes his opinions. The book is about three generations of African-American men--the eldest dying of cancer, the middle generation who discovers he has Alzheimer's, and the youngest who has participated in a serious crime--all with serious problems and all who need to be understood. It is a sad tale, but one that leaves the reader with a feeling of hope and redemption. I am a senior citizen who learned so many things from this wonderful story and look forward to more books from this talented and prolific writer. Don't let us down, Mr. Pitts. Keep on writing!
9 people found this helpful
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A Must Read

OMG this book kept me up most of the night. I couldn't put it down it's just that good. For his first novel this is very impressive, relevant and thought provoking.Bravo!!
2 people found this helpful
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This One Really Made Me Consider My Life...

The only reason I rated this book four stars and not five is because I was shocked and upset that one of the characters didn't turn out the way I would have hoped. It was masterfully written but just not the way I wanted it. Other than me being over opinionated, this book was amazing! It challenged me to consider my relationship with my father and other black men across various generations. It was a wake up call that we can never forget the history of where we have been and how each of us has great qualities and are yet seriously flawed. I consider this a must read!
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Bigger, Smarter, Better

Just finished "Before I Forget" - The writing is so good , the first few chapters were like reading Baldwin - But I kept thinking this isn't anything I know or relate to - When I got to the end of the story I realized I was bigger, smarter, better -This is a shared journey -
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"Befroe I Forget" is an Unforgettable Read!

I haven't become so involved in the storyline of a book in many months; I read quite a bit--smile. "Before I Forget" by Leonard Pitts, Jr. is as much a saga about the relationships between fathers and their sons as Ernest Gaines' poignant "In My Father's House" was in an earlier decade! Why is there still a disconnect between fathers and their sons? How can a son reconnect with his father--and why should he; THEN, at the same time forge a relationship with his only son---when he himself, is dying? That is Mo Johnson's predicament in Before I Forget.

Acclaimed journalist and non-fiction writer, Leonard Pitts, Jr. has penned his first novel "Before I Forget," about a 48 year old, one time famous R&B crooner, who discovers that his mind is being destroyed by Alzheimer's, that his son has been arrested for armed robbery and murder, that his estranged father is dying of cancer. This should be enough for you check out this poignant new novel. TRUST, you will not be disappointed in the storyline or the impeccably detailed imagery Pitts displays throughout the novel. If the well-crafted story isn't enough, all you need do is pull out your classic 1970s R&B Solid Gold hits to play as you read--smile. Pitts, unlike some journalists, has made a successful leap into the fiction genre with "Before I Forget."
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Four Stars

helps explain much of what society is going through today
1 people found this helpful

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