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Don't Cry for Me

A Novel

by Daniel Black

Narrator Daniel Black

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Length 7 hours 27 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“This book blew me away. Through intimate letters to his son, Jacob reconciles with the man he could have been. Daniel Black creates a stunning work on ancestral heritage, history, family, and the legacy of being a Black man in America.”
— Lauren Nopenz Fairley • Curious Iguana

Bookseller recommendation

“A complex read told by a father whose made a lifetime of mistakes. Is a deathbed too late to seek forgiveness?”
— Tranise • Onyx Oasis Bookstore

Summary
About the author
About the narrator

Don't miss Daniel Black's next novel Isaac's Song coming January 2025

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK IN ESSENCE MAGAZINE, THE MILLIONS AND BOOKISH

"Don't Cry for Me is a perfect song."—Jesmyn Ward

A Black father makes amends with his gay son through letters written on his deathbed in this wise and penetrating novel of empathy and forgiveness, for fans of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robert Jones Jr. and Alice Walker

As Jacob lies dying, he begins to write a letter to his only son, Isaac. They have not met or spoken in many years, and there are things that Isaac must know. Stories about his ancestral legacy in rural Arkansas that extend back to slavery. Secrets from Jacob's tumultuous relationship with Isaac's mother and the shame he carries from the dissolution of their family. Tragedies that informed Jacob's role as a father and his reaction to Isaac's being gay.

But most of all, Jacob must share with Isaac the unspoken truths that reside in his heart. He must give voice to the trauma that Isaac has inherited. And he must create a space for the two to find peace.

With piercing insight and profound empathy, acclaimed author Daniel Black illuminates the lived experiences of Black fathers and queer sons, offering an authentic and ultimately hopeful portrait of reckoning and reconciliation. Spare as it is sweeping, poetic as it is compulsively readable, Don't Cry for Me is a monumental novel about one family grappling with love's hard edges and the unexpected places where hope and healing take flight.

Fiction Historical Fiction LGBTQIA+ Fiction Fiction - Literary

Daniel Black is an author and professor of African American studies at Clark Atlanta University. His books include The Coming, Perfect Peace and They Tell Me of a Home. He is the winner of the Distinguished Writer Award from the Middle-Atlantic Writer's Association and has been nominated for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, the Ernest J. Gaines Award,and the Georgia Author of the Year Award. He was raised in Blackwell, Arkansas, and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.