Lucille Clifton’s memoir has a difficult passage about her father, who was a difficult man.
After Samuel Louis Sayles Sr. died, the poet tried to measure her father’s influence. The passage mentions Clifton’s siblings, Punkin and Jo, and her husband, Fred. Here’s what she said about her father:
He was a strong man, a strong family man, my Daddy. So many people knew him for a man in a time when it wasn’t so common. And he lived with us, our Daddy lived in our house with us, and that wasn’t common either. He was not a common man. Now, he did some things, he did some things, but he always loved his family.
He hurt us all a lot and we hurt him a lot, the way people who love each other do, you know. I probably am better off than any of us, better off in my mind, you know, and I credit Fred for that. Punkin she has a hard time living in the world and so does my brother and Jo has a hard time and gives one too. And a lot of all that is his fault, has something to do with him.
There are many different ideas in our culture about what being “a strong man, a strong family man” means. Some of those ideas are more toxic than others.
The poet dedicated her memoir to her father, who died in 1969, and
who is somewhere,
being a man.
• Source: lucille clifton, good woman: poems and a memoir 1969-1980; Rochester, N.Y.: BOA Editions, Ltd., 1987, p. 273.
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