Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black

Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023--San Antonio 

Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black is an emotionally moving story about a Black man raised in rural Arkansas by his strict grandfather and loving grandmother.  I could identify with so many things written in it--even simple things like aluminum markers on graves because people were too poor to buy tombstones, girls who got pregnant in the 50s being shunned by the community, families keeping secrets from the past, men not being able to show or verbally express their emotions, believing and behaving the way one does because that was how you were taught to believe and behave, not even thinking of questioning things, etc.  The book consists of a series of writings during the last days of life for the man to his estranged son.  He tells his family history, his personal story, his regrets, his growth in understanding and accepting over time, etc.  The reviews make a big deal over the fact that he is writing to his GAY son, but the same story could have been about him writing to a shunned daughter who got pregnant outside of marriage or to someone after some other reason that estrangement has occurred; the author just decided to make the estrangement be over the son being gay.   It's a great book because of what it is telling about the father's life--what it was like for him as a child, how he met his eventual wife, how his beliefs and how he was raised caused problems in his relationships with both his wife and son, how he eventually began to change as a person, and his suffering and his regrets as he did change and looked back at his life during the final days of it.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.