For these first two summer months of June and July, I will be on a 25+ city tour across the entire USA to discuss my most popular trilogy book series based on the urban classic Flyy Girl title that I wrote and published back in 1993, which was all about the issues of urban materialism in the 1980s era of Philadelphia that I grew up in as a teenager.

I had been trying to get the publisher at Simon & Schuster to re-release the popular book for a number of years now, starting with the 25-year anniversary seven years ago, then the 30-year anniversary just two years ago, but to no avail. I even asked the film production and distribution company of Lionsgate to allow me to use the marketable quote “soon to be a motion picture” on a new release of the book, while they were working on the film vehicle. But neither one of these major companies budged on doing anything new with the series until now, after 32 years of Flyy Girl’s original publication.

In the process of pulling together new cover jacket designs to relaunch all 3 books with Simon & Schuster /Atria Books—which includes the sequel, For the Love of Money, that hit the New York Times bestsellers list in August of 2000, and won an NAACP Image Award for Most Outstanding Work of Fiction in February 2001, and Boss Lady, the trilogy book released in summer 2005—I explained that the theme of the 3 books followed the elevation of the main character “Tracy Ellison,” who was featured at the tender birthday age of six in the opening chapter of Flyy Girl, and developed into a bold, calculating and assertive teenager. She then became a mid-20s college grad with a master’s degree, a poet, a teacher and a script writer in the sequel book, For the Love of Money. And finally, the iconic Philadelphia character became a mid-30s brand name and merchandise developer in her third and final book, Boss Lady.

So, what we developed visually and psychologically with the re-release of the entire trilogy series was a representation of “Tracy’s” elevation through a $300 gold, bamboo earring on the first book, a $30,000 Hermes Birkin bag on the second book, and a $300,000 Rolls Royce on the third book—although we were unable to angle the photography of the car correctly enough to spotlight the Rolls Royce, where her designer sunglasses now claim more of the 3^rd cover design spotlight.

Ironically, as the popular saying of realistic creativity goes, so-called “fiction” can often represent the facts. Over the past 20 years of American history, the young Black woman has now graduated from college, earning more degrees—including master’s and PhD’s—and more personal income than ever before. And thousands of them have become bosses in both the corporate world and the world of entrepreneurship. Even young female rappers have now become their own bosses, along with branded female athlete. And it’s a beautiful thing to see!

So, I had in mind to discuss that elevation of the American Black woman and celebrate her rise for my entire trilogy tour this summer. And I initially called the tour, “The Phenomenon of Flyy Girl by Omar Tyree.” Then real life hit me.

After a 20-year battle to figure out the elements of my own failed marriage in my personal life, the elevation of the Black woman had somehow become troublesome, not only for me, but for a number of married men, where women were no longer willing to play the background in their careers for the careers and aspirations of their husbands or significant others. Therefore, a new household battle had begun, where the young Black woman announced, “It’s my turn now,” while deciding to use more of her time and energy on her own ambitions and aspirations than sitting around watching and waiting to celebrate his.

Expectantly, with more college degrees and education that qualifies women for higher employment positions and salaries, many young Black women now want to make their own money on their terms. And they should the opportunities to do it too. I totally agree in the equality of work and pay.

But here’s where the issue of equal pay gets cloudy when we think about the equilibrium of a relationship, particularly in regards to our opposing genders. Like it or not, the majority of human societies have prepared the young males to immediately consider “taking care” of their families with their expected income, which includes their wives. We all know the saying, “A real man provides for his family.” But is that “family provider” expectation the same for a young woman…? No.

I have never heard of a young woman being prepared to “provide for her family” that includes a husband. No, her parents are telling her to provide for HERSELF and for her CHILDREN if the father does not do so. But the man is ALWAYS looked at to provide for his WIFE and his KIDS. That’s not even a debate. So, what often happens now is, with more women being accustomed to marrying men who make more money than they do, the norm is for a woman to think of marrying economically UP, while most men think of marrying economically DOWN.

Let’s think about it historically for a minute. How many poor Black, White, Yellow or Red men can realistically think about marrying a rich young princess in ANY culture? Unless that poor young man can become the most popular and wealthy warrior, athlete, businessman, artist, playboy or something, he has only a snowball’s chance in hell of marrying a young princess. But a young male Prince who marries a pretty young Cinderella who owns nothing more than the clothes on her back happens every single day of the week in every country in the world. Hell, a man can’t even get married in some countries without money. But a woman can.

So, what we end up with now are larger numbers of dissatisfied young women, who still want their men to make more money than they do, while her Prince remains charming and caters to her every need, because that’s the normal “old school” dream of a woman. Therefore, a lot of young women—even though they may not understand it—are unsatisfied with regular guys who don’t make them feel “special” because her expectations in a man has been raised significantly, where many young men no longer qualify. 

In that difficult arena of educated, gainfully employed and unsatisfied young women, more young men are now becoming apathetic, like, “F— it then. Why even try if I can never do enough to please her?” Many of these young men have learned to keep their mouths shut and get whatever they can get from these unsatisfied young women until they “ghost” each other, which means to disappear and move on without any apparent explanation. Then these young guys do it all over again with the next young and unsatisfied woman.

That ridiculous new cycle can now inhibit any and every young guy from actually becoming “a real man” in the old school sense of handing his business with a wife and family. Instead, we have misguided young men who now watch young women handle their business while he pops up to entertain her and freeload on her “goodies” for a minute. And they are all voicing their individual issues and concerns with each over social media—just like I did on a female-dominated Podcast where my own personal frustrations jumped out.

I know the detrimental distractions and battles of two professional people chasing their individual careers firsthand, and I will never be able to recover from it, because you can’t rewind the time and all of the lost years. Nor can my wife recover her lost years. We both lost those years together, battling over who goes first who’s not getting what they want to be happy.

The question now becomes, “How much do men need to do to be in alignment with a woman?” A whole lot of men are confused about that now, including me. Many men don’t know how to discuss it, and they don’t believe that an open discussion would change anything anyway. So, I began to voice those masculine frustrations in my own life that other men have been hesitant to voice, to the point where I needed mental therapy and an outlet to discuss it all.

Therefore, I added the ELEVATION and EVOLUTION components to the Flyy Girl book tour as a much bigger and more important discussion for the three titles than just a celebration of books sale, because the books were all written to SAY SOMETHING and not just to make money while someone reads it aimlessly on the beach.

No, these three books had reasons for being written, and I was ahead of time when I wrote them, where an ambitious Flyy Girl from inner-city Philadelphia, educated herself well enough to chase bigger Money out in Hollywood, and ended up becoming a Boss Lady with her own brand and a tribe of inspired young women who work for and idolize her.

Meanwhile, the same teenaged Flyy Girl who fell for guys easily in high school—as long as they had whatever excited her—had now elevated and EVOLVED to the point where no new dude could excite her enough to marry him, leaving her single with no children in her thirties—like thousands of other young women who are more in line with their careers than men. And I can’t even blame these young sisters if the young men are going to be apathetic and not try.

However, there is another complicated side of this very dynamic issue, where the most successful men are still striving, still attracting, and still dominating the dating game like they always did. In the black community, the drug dealer does not have the same stature as the hustlers from my generation of the 1980s and 90s. It’s not that kind of party in the street life anymore. But the professional athletes, the rappers, the social media stars, and the young entrepreneurial moguls are still picking whoever they want, they just can’t keep them as long now, with more young and opportunistic women taking these guys to court for various reasons to solidify a steady bank payment.

This is the real world that I’m walking into now with the Flyy Girl trilogy series in year 2025, and some people don’t want me not to say anything about it. Really? Just sell my books and celebrate? Maybe I would do that if I didn’t care about my people. If I didn’t care about our sons, our daughters, our nieces and nephews, and thousands of cousins who are all going through it in their marriages and relationships.

Hell, if these books had the ability to inspire and inform for 30+ years to date, then maybe they can do it again to create a better understanding of what’s going on out here now. That’s what I wrote books for in the first place, to make a difference in my community by utilizing and explaining the stories of our struggles. And that’s why the readers responded to it. The creative content connected.

So, after being frustrated myself with what’s going on in our gender relationships, I wanted more and better answers for a possible solution. And I came up with “The 5 Core Objectives” of this year’s tour that include #1) getting to the facts; #2) promoting literacy and understanding, #3) explaining the three levels of masculine energy; #4) explaining the four types of datable men; and #5) unraveling the five musts of marriage for each and every one of us.

After a quick look at my list of five objectives, one may ask the curious question, “If your audience is mostly women, while on tour with three feminine books, then why are you addressing so many masculine topics?” And it’s a very valid question.

My answer is this: I’ve been writing Black women characters for more than thirty years, based on what I understood about life. But realistically, as young Black women continued to elevate and evolve, I honesty loss touch with how they think. So, while I still understand how young men think, with two younger brothers, two grown sons, plenty of nephews, younger cousins, mentees, long-term friends and the like—who I understand a lot more than the young women—I wanted to EXPLAIN us men, while LISTENING to women explain themselves, because I really want to understand them.

And discussions this summer will pull no punches, because we need some serious conversations to happen between our young men and young women now that are dipped in the thorns of honesty. That means that everyone may not like everything that we have to say. But just because we don’t like them all doesn’t mean that our issues are not in need of evaluation. Because they are.

So, let our conversations begin. My full book tour schedule is now posted @ www.HotLavaEntertainement.com. Circle your calendar for the dates that I head to your city and or town and prepare to attend and participate. I would love to see you, speak to you, and hear you out, while we all learn from each other and take pictures and videos to document it.

We now have our “The 5 Core Objectives” listed right here @ www.BlackmenInAmerica.com with the colored charts, graphs and explanations to allow you all to review them and start your own conversations with.  That’s what I’ve always written new books to do, to get my community talking about the subjects at hand. And I don’t see a reason to change that approach with the old ones. So, get ready to talk to me on tour… and send in your comments to our websites.

~ Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author who has published more than 30 books and counting and won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction after graduating from Howard University, cum laude, with a degree in Print Journalism from the School of Communications in 1991.