Six Days in January — William Fredrick Cooper

Attacking society's damaging rhetoric and stereotypes around male emotions, Six Days in January offers an answer to the question: what can happen to a man when he is damaged by love?

William McCall finds himself making his way down icy streets, battling not only the wee hours and bitter cold of a Thursday morning in mid-January, but the brutal truth of a mistake he just made that has cost him the love he tried to capture with his hopeful lady, Della Montgomery. Confused and dazed as he makes his way to an empty, unsafe Fordham Road subway station, he wonders how he got to this point and if he'll ever find his way back to love. McCall had been fitted for a dog collar, like so many African American men.

But was the label warranted? Growing up, he was taught by a single mother how to be a sensitive, strong, and caring black man, however no woman wants to deal with him, for they see him as too sweet, soft, and, in the eyes of some, effeminate. By the time he is cast from Della's house and life, bitterness and insecurity has swallowed him. He has turned off his innate, chivalrous tendencies and has become a man even he failed to recognize. In order to restore faith in himself and the man he knows he's capable of being, he begins an introspective soul search, a courageous process that lasts for six days in January.