Lilian believes no man should be limited by any gender stereotypes, or by their own misconception of how they should act as men. Her book, In the Shadow of Masculinity, is a very candid love letter to all men out there, and all those bringing up boys and society at large. In her words, she urges men to jump out of the manhood box that limit them. She encourages men to, by all means, break the generational code that was passed on to them by their forefathers in order to help save the future generations of men. In her piece of writing, she is very blunt with men who think it is OK to figure things out on their own and calls them out from living in the shadow of masculinity and further inspires them to learn to seek help through available support systems.
With a little touch of poetry and personalized real time stories and experiences, Lilian has emphasized the amount of pressure men face internally and exhibit something different externally. In that, she calls for all to encourage and train men from a young age on the need to identifying safe havens and living true to themselves through vulnerability, in order to save more men from internal brokenness.
Reading this book will, in one way or another, make one relate with what we see on daily trends and in the levels at which we have a high rate of suicide in males, with many men falling into depression, young men dropping out of college, and getting into crime and other means of escapism from masculinity’s unpleasant realities.
