Don't Cry for Me
糖心TV hosts author Daniel Black for One Book One Region finale event.
Daniel Black, the award-winning featured author for the 22nd annual One Book One Region program, managed for a while to stay contained in his chair at the front of Oliva Hall in 糖心TV鈥檚 Cummings Arts Center during the program鈥檚 finale event March 31. But halfway through a lively conversation with Assistant Professor of Psychology Kendell Coker about Black鈥檚 novel , the Clark Atlanta University professor of African American studies and English could no longer stay seated. He rose鈥攖o laughter and applause from the audience鈥攁nd walked freely.
Throughout the evening, the engaged crowd of students, faculty, staff and community members laughed, applauded and murmured assent as though the magnetic Black were a preacher. In fact, before asking during the Q&A portion about the roles spirituality and the church play in African American lives today compared to the novel鈥檚 setting almost 25 years ago, one audience member said she had to stop herself from shouting, 鈥淧reach!鈥� as Black spoke.
Published in 2022, Don鈥檛 Cry for Me tells the story of Jacob, an African American man who learns he is dying from cancer and attempts to make amends after many years with his estranged gay son, Isaac, through deathbed letters. Black鈥檚 fractured relationship with his own father, who received an Alzheimer鈥檚 diagnosis in 2013, inspired the novel. 鈥淔or a long time, I had wanted us to hash things out 鈥︹�� Black wrote in his front-of-book author鈥檚 note. 鈥淎nd now the encounter could happen only in my imagination. So that was where I went.鈥�
From November 2003 until his death in February 2004, Jacob writes Isaac more than 40 letters, sharing stories from his own life growing up in rural Arkansas and being raised by his grandfather, whose own father was a slave. Hoping to unravel the misunderstandings between himself and his son, Jacob describes how he understood love, masculinity and what his roles as a father and a Black man were supposed to be.
Coker, who led Monday鈥檚 discussion, is a clinical psychologist and attorney whose primary research interests include the study of trauma, substance use, juvenile delinquency and aggression/violence. His research also explores racial and health-related disparities in the criminal justice system and the contributing impact of systemic bias/discrimination.
鈥淚 want everybody to really appreciate that this is the type of book, as powerful as it is, that some people want off the shelves,鈥� Coker said of Don鈥檛 Cry for Me. 鈥淪o I read it twice, and something very powerful and unexpected happened to me when I was reading the second time: I realized I was absorbing it as a father raising a Black son.鈥�
Black explained that was an integral part of his goal. 鈥淚 wanted to write this book to see if we could plant the seeds of a kind of healing between fathers and sons, and if we could begin to announce that vulnerability is not only okay, but it's a beautiful thing for a man to share. And to be so bold to see if I can suggest that vulnerability become a requirement for what it really means to be an upstanding man.鈥�
During the conversation, Black and Coker also touched upon attachment, cultural neglect, forgiveness, the impact of integration, intergenerational trauma, parenting, relationships, slavery鈥檚 reverberations and survival.
鈥淭his is the story of a man who believes he tried so hard and provided a life for his own son that's so unbelievably different from the life he had,鈥� Black said. 鈥淎nd he's also troubled in his soul, because he dreamed of a son who is not the son he got. But what Jacob also begins to realize is that, as parents, you don't simply remake yourself when you have a child. We think, 鈥榃ell, the child ought to be me or something like me, because they came from me.鈥� That's not true at all.
鈥淎s Khalil Gibran says, children come through you but not from you. And so, for many of us, the best thing you can do is discover who your child is and get mature enough yourself to let that child be.鈥�
Coker asked Black a question many readers want to know: 鈥淲as Jacob forgiven?鈥� In response, Black plugged the book鈥檚 sequel, Isaac鈥檚 Song, released in January 2025. 鈥淵ou will absolutely see if he鈥檚 forgiven, and the question really is, has he forgiven himself? I'm not sure Jacob believes he has the permission to forgive himself until Isaac forgives him.鈥�
Don鈥檛 Cry for Me is Black鈥檚 seventh novel. He has also published an essay collection, Black on Black: On Our Resilience and Brilliance in America.
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