Writing, Memory, and the Making of A Black Man

On Steve Majors’ New Memoir, Man Made

As a prolific reader and writer, I could have never imagined that while working on my own memoir, I’d one day find myself in demand by other writers I deeply admire. I still hesitate when people use words like host or moderate around me — it feels like the kind of thing seasoned literary veterans do, not the kid from Rochester who just loved words enough to make them his life’s work.

So when my friend and fellow writer Steve Majors reached out and asked if I’d host a conversation around his new memoir, Man Made: Searching for Dads, Daddies, Father Figures, and Fatherhood, I was both humbled and deeply moved.

His memoir is out today — and I can already tell it’s one that will stay with readers long after they’ve closed the final page.

How I Met Steve

I first learned about Steve a few years ago when he appeared on WXXI Connections to discuss his debut memoir, High Yella (University of Georgia Press, 2021). I remember it vividly. I was at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, in the thick of a writing residency, surrounded by the hushed rhythm of Ithaca woods, working on my own debut: Just Desserts: 40 Step by Step Gluten Free Dessert Recipes. In the quiet of that retreat, I listened to Steve speak with such grace and precision about race, identity, and belonging — the invisible scaffolding that holds up so many of our stories. His words hit me like a mirror and a window at once.

A mirror, because so much of his journey echoed my own experiences as a Black man negotiating the boundaries of expectation and love. A window, because he offered a view into the complexities of fatherhood — a topic that, for me, has always been layered with questions about lineage, legacy, and care.

What Man Made Teaches Us

In Man Made, Steve goes deeper — searching through the tangled roots of masculinity, fatherhood, and memory. It’s not just a memoir about family; it’s an exploration of what it means to build yourself from the fragments life gives you. He writes with the tenderness of someone who has looked pain in the eye and refused to turn away. His prose holds both precision and poetry — the kind that lingers. The kind that makes you pause mid-sentence and whisper, yes, that’s it. What moves me most about Steve’s work is how unflinchingly it names the ache of absence — and yet, somehow, still insists on joy. His writing reminds me that healing doesn’t always come from finding answers, but from daring to ask better questions.

Writing Our Way Home

Every time I read Steve’s work, I’m reminded why I write — not for recognition or acclaim, but to build bridges of understanding between lives that might otherwise never meet. Stories are how we remember. How we resist forgetting. How we find our way home. So as I prepare to welcome Steve to Rochester in January 2026 for an intimate reading and conversation at Writers and Books, I find myself thinking about the broader tapestry we’re both a part of — a lineage of Black writers writing ourselves into history, redefining what it means to belong, to father, to be seen.

Stay tuned for details as we continue to write history, build connection, and proliferate the diversity of the Black American experience and community through the written word.

Man Made: Searching for Dads, Daddies, Father Figures,and Fatherhood By Steve Majors Out Now — available wherever books are sold.

You can follow Steve’s work and updates here: www.Steve-Majors.com

Support My Work, Build This Community

To meet this moment and tell the real stories—about my existence and experiences, I must be compensated for my knowledge work. I follow a legacy of renowned Black writers, creators, activists, provocateurs, like Langston Hughes, Malcom X, Marcus Garvey, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ida. B. Wells, Billy Holiday, Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Dr. Maya Angelou, Octavia Butler, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and so many others. They didn’t do it alone or without monetary compensation. Neither can I.

There are many ways you can support my work right now:

• Become a paid member of this Substack.

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