In this article, the author talks about a summer program at the African American Adolescent Male Summer Literacy Institute which aims to improve literacy skills of black male teens. The African American Adolescent Male Summer Literacy Institute is now in its fourth year at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC). Alfred Tatum, director of the UIC Reading Clinic, conceived the Institute to "nurture the next generation of black male writers" so that they become not just the voice for the next generation but the "voice for themselves." For five weeks, the boys, called Brother Authors, write poems, short stories, broadsides, and the beginnings of a novel. They critique each other and read the works of various published authors. They will go home with a dozen books toward building a library of their own.