Daniel Black

A piercing collection of essays on racial tension in America and the ongoing fight for visibility, change, and lasting hope“There are stories that must be told.”Acclaimed novelist and scholar Daniel Black has spent a career writing into the unspoken, fleshing out, through storytelling, pain that can’t be described.Now, in his debut essay collection, Black gives voice to the experiences of those who often find themselves on the margins. Tackling topics ranging from police brutality to the AIDS crisis to the role of HBCUs to queer representation in the black church, Black on Black celebrates the resilience, fortitude, and survival of black people in a land where their body is always on display.As Daniel Black reminds us, while hope may be slow in coming, it always arrives, and when it does, it delivers beyond the imagination. Propulsive, intimate, and achingly relevant, Black on Black is cultural criticism at its openhearted best.

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 WalkerAs 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.

Twenty-eight-year-old protagonist Tommy Lee Tyson steps off the Greyhound bus in his hometown of Swamp Creek, Arkansas--a place he left when he was eighteen, vowing never to return. Yet fate and a Ph.D. in black studies force him back to his rural origins as he seeks to understand himself and the black community that produced him. A cold, nonchalant father and an emotionally indifferent mother make his return, after a ten-year hiatus, practically unbearable, and the discovery of his baby sister's death and her burial in the backyard almost consumes him. His mother watches his agony when he discovers his sister's tombstone, but neither she nor other family members is willing to disclose the secret of her death. Only after being prodded incessantly does his older brother, Willie James, relent and provide Tommy Lee with enough knowledge to figure out exactly what happened and why. Meanwhile, Tommy's seventy-year-old teacher--lying on her deathbed--asks him to remain in Swamp Creek and assume her position as the headmaster of the one-room schoolhouse. He refuses vehemently and she dies having bequeathed him her five thousand-book collection in the hopes that he will change his mind. Over the course of a one-week visit, riddled with tension, heartache, and revelation, Tommy Lee Tyson discovers truths about his family, his community, and his undeniable connection to rural Southern black folk and their ways.

Daniel Black is at the top of his literary game with The Coming, a novel that National Book Award-winning author CharlesJohnson (Middle Passage) calls "powerful and beautiful" and "a work to be proud of." Lyrical, poetic, and hypnotizing, The Coming tells the story of a people's capture and sojourn from their homeland across the Middle Passage--a traumatic trip that exposed the strength andresolve of the African spirit. Extreme conditions produce extraordinary insight, and only after being stripped of everything do they discover the unspeakablebeauty they once took for granted. This powerful, haunting novel will shake readers to their very souls.

The beloved author of Don’t Cry for Me and Perfect Peace returns with a poignant, emotionally exuberant novel about a young queer Black man finding his voice in 1980s Chicago—a novel of family, forgiveness and perseverance, for fans of The Great Believers and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous Isaac is at a crossroads in his young life. Growing up in Missouri, the son of a caustic, hard-driving father, he was conditioned to suppress his artistic pursuits and physical desires, notions that didn’t align with a traditional view of masculinity. But now, in late ’80s Chicago, Isaac has finally carved out a life of his own. He is sensitive and tenderhearted and has built up the courage to seek out a community. Yet just as he begins to embrace who he is, two social catalysts—the AIDS crisis and Rodney King’s attack—collectively extinguish his hard-earned joy. At a therapist’s encouragement, Isaac begins to write down his story. In the process, he taps into a creative energy that will send him on a journey back to his family, his ancestral home in Arkansas and the inherited trauma of the nation’s dark past. But a surprise discovery will either unlock the truths he’s seeking or threaten to derail the life he’s fought so hard to claim. Poignant, sweeping and luminously told, Isaac's Song is a return to the beloved characters of Don’t Cry for Me and a high-water mark in the career of an award-winning author.

As seen on TikTok, Daniel Black’s Perfect Peace is the heartbreaking portrait of a large, rural southern family’s attempt to grapple with their mother’s desperate decision to make her newborn son into the daughter she will never have—“a complex, imaginative story of one unforgettable black family in mid-twentieth century Arkansas” (Atlanta Magazine). When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother Emma Jean tells her bewildered daughter, “You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that ain’t what you was supposed to be. So, from now on, you gon’ be a boy. It’ll be a little strange at first, but you’ll get used to it, and this’ll be over after while.” From this point forward, Perfect’s life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events—while the rest of his family is forced to question everything they thought they knew about gender, sexuality, unconditional love, and fulfillment.