Bad Boy - a memoir by Walter Dean Myers

Bad Boy – a memoir by Walter Dean Myers

 

Having read some of Myers’ work, I was excited to read his memoir.  The title mislead me (which I was pleased with) because, after picking up the book and reading the title I stereotyped that I was going to read a story about a terrible childhood and rebellious child who was saved by some teacher/author/book – and I just didn’t want to read that story – I wanted 

there to be more to Myers.  It turns out there was. 

Bad boy is more a story of misunderstanding, as Myers shows throughout the novel.  Because he didn’t do much homework, because he didn’t always go to school, because he appeared not to care, people around him assumed he was a bad boy who truly didn’t care.  The reality that Myers exposes is just how much he did care.  He cared a great deal but was confused by what it was to be a man, to be black, and to be poor.  His struggles with his identity and finding his place, as well as his unwillingness to talk to those around him about these things, leads him down a destructive path that 

could have ended terribly.  Actually he cared a great deal about his life and where it was going (which was no where) that he sunk into a pit of shame that he barely escaped from.  His story is articulated so well, which is really ironic since it was his inability to articulate his thoughts that got him the label of “bad boy” to begin with. 

Myers also talks about race in a unique way.  He never really thought about race until he was kind of forced to.  Once he was aware (the job where he lost his position to the new white worker and was moved to the back) he thought about it more and more and struggled even greater with identity.  He states:

 But it seemed to me that both of these concepts, career and maleness, were only subdivisions of the larger idea of race.  When I thought of the major careers, I thought of whites, not blacks.  When I thought of maleness, I thought of whites with political or economic power and blacks with muscle.  My definition of a black man was, except for the rare instance, a man without an outstanding career, and a man who had to define his maleness by how muscular he was.  These definitions were reinforced everywhere I looked.  (176-177)

For a young man wanting more out of life, wanting to go to college, to write, to be someone, he really didn’t have a lot of examples to look up to or emulate.  In fact, the first successful blacks he mentions include Billie Holiday (who was addicted to drugs) and Langston Hughes (whom he viewed as quite ordinary).  The author he mentions, Dylan Thomas, is a drunk whom circumstances Myers romanticizes.  Needless to say – for a lost “bad boy” he doesn’t have a great troupe to follow.  Not until he reads Sonny Blues by James Baldwin does he become exposed to a different role model.  A black man and author who seemed to have his act together a bit more than the other success stories mentioned above.  He also meets Hughes again and seems to have a different take on him at this stage in his life. 

Ultimately though, it is Myers himself who has to come to terms with his life and his identity to gain confidence and success as an author.  He does that, and Bad Boy takes us through that journey.  It was an insightful journey to experience.