Air Traffic

Gregory Pardlo examines the considerable presence, and then eventual absence, of his father in this revealing memoir about family, life, and manhood. In narrating his own work, he makes the listening experience intimate, almost painfully so, as he weaves together the historical treatment of African-Americans in the U.S. with his family's experiences. Sharing the ups and downs of his childhood, as determined by the whims of his father's mercurial personality, Pardlo persists in peeling back the layers of disappointment with a calculated precision. His muted approach in retelling his father's battles with addiction and significant amounts of debt underscores this complicated legacy. Pardlo's warm timbre will linger in the listener's ear long after he has stopped speaking. M.R. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine