More than 25 years ago when I still had a hard-driving Black woman literary agent from the tough city of Detroit, Michigan, to pitch my books to the publishers, I was complaining so badly about the lack of readership from Black men that was seriously impacting my writing career, that my agent finally exploded on me and said, “Omar! Would you stop talking about these Black men and reading! They’re not going to do it! These men won’t read a book even if you gave it to them! And if you’re that concerned about it, you need to start a nonprofit or something.”

 So, I did. I formed the Urban Literacy Project (ULP) in 2009, and went on to organize and attend dozens of reading and literacy events, while cutting checks from my own bank accountant to keep it going. I wanted boys and men to see how much life information, human experiences and understandings they leave on the table by not reading. Reading literally opens up a world of different perspectives on everything.

I also introduced, defined, and explained “The 5 Key Components of Literacy” that will never change, with #1) Reading defined as simply taking in information, #2) Writing defined as the ability to communicate, #3) Thinking defined as the process of everything, #4) Visualization defined as the ability to see the past, present and future through words and ideas, and #5) Application defined as the ability to apply skills.

Well, in the American work force, if you want a job that pays the bills, you typically have to fill out an Application, where you will need to Read what an employer asks of you, then Write your answer nice and neat for someone else to understand it. Then if you want a higher paying job, an employer will likely interview you to see how well you Think and process information, while also Visualizing the future of your role with the company. And there is no getting around that process. That’s what we all do for employment, Read, Write, Think, Visualize and Apply, every single day of our lives.

Sounds like a great idea, right? Not if other people don’t know about it. So, I quickly found that my mission for literacy could not sustain itself without me because no one else with money seemed to care about the issue of Black and Hispanic men reading. Math and science STEM programs get all of the money in the school systems. Why? Because White kids needed to compete with Asians nationally and abroad, which is more important to the economics of White America than Black and Hispanic boys who rap, talk shit, argue, fight, dance, draw, play sports, kill, intimidate, make babies, and go to prison, but not read.

Yes! I said it. And I’m a Black man. Who does not hate himself? And does not hate YOU! I’m just having what us men call a “tough love” moment, as we like to state to each other with everything else but reading. Why? Because Black and Hispanic boys who become men will get upset about it, and then whine and gripe about someone picking on them or feeling superior or uppity to them. Or, they’ll snap and say, “We just don’t read your books,” as a defense mechanism.

Fellas, I am 57 years old now, and I have been around men of color for my entire life. And no offense to the sisters, but where I’m from, we had certain words for guys who became overly emotional and couldn’t handle the pressures of hard knocks manhood. However, when it comes to reading, we allow the excuses and emotionalism of our deficiency to persist, and it’s now of our own doing. Plain and simple. We actually get mad just because someone tells us to go and read something, as if reading is the most torturous cuss word in the dictionary.

 Well, I’m sorry guys. I apologize. I didn’t know that reading was some type of mental competition that we failed and became ashamed of. I just wanted to be able to converse on more topics than just sports, music, money, sex, crime and drama with my brothers, without them constantly saying, “Oh, I don’t know much about that. But I heard…”

Reading makes it easy for us to go “and find out” in order to catch up to speed on the news and hot topics of discussion. That’s all I’m asking. Just go read up on it, brothers. It’s not that hard. I’m not trying to offend you. Just read the book or the article so we can all discuss it. But instead of agreeing to do so, like you’re reading and unraveling this honest and detailed article, we continue to allow offended males to get away from the dilemma at hand, which is reading something for their own comprehension. We actually accept their offense and back down from them, allowing them to continue being illiterate and defensive about it.

And… if you already read, then I’m obviously not referring to you, so don’t get offended by this. Please focus your energy on the brothers who don’t read. I don’t get offended when sisters say, “These brothers need to get their acts together.” I’ve been had my act together, so they are not talking about me. And when they are, because none of us are perfect, I will actually say, “Yeah, I gotta work on that.” Because I do. I don’t get offended and run away from it. Knowing yourself and being HONEST is a key principal of life.

With everything else that men do, we tell each other to “man up,” “take it like a man,” “do what you need to do,” “handle your business,” “be responsible,” and don’t “get all emotional on us,” because “a man is a man” with no excuses. Right? But when it comes to reading something, we change the whole narrative to “Well… we just don’t learn that way. Maybe you need to put it on an audio-book or produce a video for it. Or even create drawings and illustrations?”

Really? This is what people are telling me to do, RIGHT NOW, for grown-ass MEN who won’t read. So… let me get this straight. We just give up on boys and men who don’t read that easily? What happened to the “tough love” and “responsibility” of “manning up” for reading?  Why does that word reading make us feel so… sensitive?

Interesting now, ain’t it? Have I pressed your button of offense yet?

What happened to us saying “man up and read,” just like we would say “man, up and fight back” when dealing with the neighborhood bully? Reading is fighting back too, fellas, fighting back for your brains. But somehow, we allow our brothers, uncles, fathers, friends, teammates, mothers and community members to give up on that fight. You know, because reading is another part of slavery that “the White man forced on us.” And when we don’t do it well early on in school, because we’re “distracted easily” with “short-attentions spans,” we then back away from it forever, while making excuses for the rest of our lives instead of correcting it through effort. And I’m simply tired of hearing the excuses, brothers.

Ain’t nobody stopping you from reading but YOU! And I’m breaking down the English on purpose here because I came from West Philadelphia Black poverty and not educated rich people. In fact, only one of my five uncles even graduated from high school. And he was the youngest, the most mature, the most responsible, and the longest employed with a steady mortgage, and he still gives great advice. And yup, you guessed it. He was the one who read.

I’m just calling it like it is. I love all five of my uncles dearly. But… they didn’t do what they were supposed to do, and they all suffered because of it. Period. I was there to see it with my own eyes, while my mother—their older sister—did not allow me to head in that same direction. So, she forced me to “sit down and read something,” which eventually propelled me through high school, college, and now the world, sharing the expansive ideas that reading prepared me for. And I’m still a man and not less manly for it. You know, because some guys, sadly, still view reading as feminine.  

So yes, I’m offended now, that instead of us getting our beloved brothers, uncles, fathers, nephews, cousins, friends, teammates and fellow gender citizens to MAN UP and start reading everything they can, like Malcolm X did in prison, we continue to allow our own folks to sidestep the process of sharpening the most powerful tool that they own… their minds. That’s what reading does. It allows you to take the horns of your own lessons with a highlighter pen, and aggressively acquire knowledge that you utilize to solve problems like math, instead of having an audio-book or video that dumps information into your brain that you accept passively, like a robot.

When Malcolm X read, he eventually became one of the greatest intellectual and cultural speakers the world had ever known. But everybody’s not Malcolm X, and they refuse to read like he read. Therefore, my solo mission of masculine readership absolutely wore me out! To everyone else, it was no big deal. You know, Black men are still alive and well, right? Their lack of reading hasn’t hurt them that bad. We still see them every day, thriving. So, what’s the big deal?

Well, now it’s more than a dozen years later, and I still hear the same story in the book world. Especially in the creative lane of “fiction” where men figure you’re making up a bunch of stuff to appease women. So, we have to make sure our books always appeal to them, since they read a lot more “fiction” than men do. But that tends to lean everything we do in literature away from the man. It is incredibly hard to publish and sell a boy’s book in our community, even when they like it because we rarely get excited about it. Unless you have major media attention or a film production deal that men will indeed watch on the big screen from Stephen King, Michael Crichton, John Grisham, and Ian Fleming with his James Bond series. But… these White men had BOOKS that SOLD first and allowed them to become the cultural icons they’ve now become in both the literature and film worlds. I pray to join these guys myself one day, like Oscar Micheaux, the first black man to do it. But that’s not why I want more brothers to read. I just want us to learn how to EXPLORE more, which is what reading is, the exploration of things that you didn’t know before.

With all that being said, I’ve been having a lot of conversations of late about this quagmire—a difficult, precarious or entrapping position—of masculine readership and how to address it, if we cannot address it head on, because of the fear of offense.

Well… the last time I checked, fellas… those needles at the doctor’s office still hurt. Nevertheless, we need certain medicines to penetrate our system and blood stream, immediately. That’s why those painful needles that we hate are more effective than pills and liquids. Needles go straight to the heart of the issue. And it hurts. But only until we take it, like men, and feel better.

But here’s what my reading and writing peers told me to do to avoid the pain of that needle on my side and yours:

#1) Stop saying men don’t read because they don’t like hearing that and will respond negatively to it, which will hurt you more than it helps you.

#2) Volunteer your time and services at boy’s and men’s clubs, organizations and groups to stay involved with men and boys who will support you.

#3) Continue doing public speaking and workshop events that champion reading, writing and literacy, like you’ve been doing for the past 30 years.

#4) Record some 30-90 second videos to discuss the issue of literacy and reading on social media, where more activity is found and listened to these days.

#5) Explain at least 3 reasons why men should read your books, how they will relate to them, or what they may gain from them.

#6) Utilize more terminology in your talks that boys and men are more familiar with, like quarters, halftime, timeouts, break sessions, the full game plan, and so on to make the information more relatable to them.

#7) Target more sports podcasters, radio shows, colleges and HBCUs, little league sports teams, rec centers, hip hop groups, and active fraternities to remain involved with the audience.

#8) Share excerpts from your books with men so they can read small samples of it to get a feel for how you write and what you write about in order to see if they like it.

#9) Write shorter, easy to digest articles as bite-sized introductions in other publications and websites to spread the word on what your goals are for men and literacy. 

Okay. That’s a pretty good list of things-to-do there. I get it. So… let’s start the process right now with a sample chapter of my upcoming football book, Touchdown In Brazil, about the first ever NFL game that was played in Sao Paulo in September 2024 between my hometown Philadelphia Eagles and the legendary Packers of Green Bay.

~ 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.