Daniel Black

"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."

*From the Viral Clark Atlanta University Commencement Speaker*From the Georgia Author of the Year Award Winner**A Zibby's Most Anticipated Book of 2023**A "Next Big Idea Club" Must-Read Book for January**An Essence "Books by Black Authors to Read This Winter" Pick**An Ebony Entertainment "Required Reading" Book for January**A Lambda Literary "Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Literature" for January**A Southern Review of Books Best Book of January*"A tour de force. Brilliant. Passionate. Deeply caring." --Eddie S. Glaude Jr., New York Times bestselling author of Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own"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.Propulsive, intimate and achingly relevant, Black on Black is cultural criticism at its openhearted best."The moral and ethical imperative of Black on Black is to speak a truth that renders black lives sacred, valued, and luminous. Daniel Black announces a prophetic lineage that places him among Baldwin's progeny." --Major Jackson, poet and author of The Absurd Man"A book you will not want to put down and will be excited to share." --Maryemma Graham, University of Kansas Professor of English and Founding Director, Project on the History of Black Writing

*A Washington Post Best Book of January 2025**A Southern Review of Books Best Southern Book of January 2025**A Book Riot 13 of the Best New Queer Books Out in January 2025**A Book of the Month Pick for January 2025**From the Viral Clark Atlanta University Commencement Speaker**From the Georgia Author of the Year Award Winner*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 GorgeousIsaac 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.

Releasing in paperback January 2025*From the Viral Clark Atlanta University Commencement Speaker**From the Georgia Author of the Year Award Winner**A Zibby's Most Anticipated Book of 2023**A "Next Big Idea Club" Must-Read Book for January**An Essence "Books by Black Authors to Read This Winter" Pick**An Ebony Entertainment "Required Reading" Book for January**A Lambda Literary "Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Literature" for January**A Southern Review of Books Best Book of January*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.

Don't miss Daniel Black's next novel Isaac's Song coming January 2025From the Georgia Author of the Year Award WinnerNAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK IN ESSENCE MAGAZINE, THE MILLIONS AND BOOKISH"Don't Cry for Me is a perfect song."--Jesmyn WardA 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.

Don't miss Daniel Black's next novel Isaac's Song coming January 2025*From the Viral Clark Atlanta University Commencement Speaker**From the Georgia Author of the Year Award Winner**A Book of the Month Club Pick*NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK IN ESSENCE MAGAZINE, THE MILLIONS AND BOOKISH"Don't Cry for Me is a perfect song."—Jesmyn WardA 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.

This book takes the interface – or rather to interface, a process rather than a discrete object or location – as a concept emblematic of our contemporary embodied relationship with technological artefacts. The fundamental question addressed by this book is: How can we understand what it means to perceive or act upon the world as a body–artefact assemblage? Black works to clarify the role of artefacts of all kinds in human perception and action, then considers the ways in which new digital technologies can expand and transform this capacity to change our mode of engagement with our environment. Throughout, the discussion is grounded in specific technologies – some already familiar and some still in development (e.g. new virtual reality and brain–machine interface technologies, natural user interfaces, etc.). In order to develop a detailed, generalizable theory of how we interface with technology, Black assembles an analytical toolkit from a number of different disciplines, including media theory, ethology, clinical psychology, cultural theory, philosophy, science and technology studies, cultural history, aesthetics and neuroscience.

This book takes the interface – or rather to interface, a process rather than a discrete object or location – as a concept emblematic of our contemporary embodied relationship with technological artefacts. The fundamental question addressed by this book is: How can we understand what it means to perceive or act upon the world as a body–artefact assemblage? Black works to clarify the role of artefacts of all kinds in human perception and action, then considers the ways in which new digital technologies can expand and transform this capacity to change our mode of engagement with our environment. Throughout, the discussion is grounded in specific technologies – some already familiar and some still in development (e.g. new virtual reality and brain–machine interface technologies, natural user interfaces, etc.). In order to develop a detailed, generalizable theory of how we interface with technology, Black assembles an analytical toolkit from a number of different disciplines, including media theory, ethology, clinical psychology, cultural theory, philosophy, science and technology studies, cultural history, aesthetics and neuroscience.

Drawing on philosophical, neurological and cultural answers to the question of what constitutes a body, this book explores the interaction between mechanistic beliefs about human bodies and the successive technologies that have established and illustrated these beliefs. At the same time, it draws upon newer perspectives on technology and embodied human thought in order to highlight the limitations and inadequacies of such beliefs and suggest alternative perspectives. In so doing, it provides a position from which widely held assumptions about our relationship with technology can be understood and questioned, by both showing how these presuppositions have emerged and developed, and examining the extent to which they are dependent upon our grasp of specific technologies. Illustrated with examples from the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, as well as the industrial age and the recent eras of informatics, gene science and nanotechnology, Embodiment and Mechanisation highlights the ways in which technological changes have led to shifts in the definition of machine and body, investigating their shared underlying belief that all matter can be reduced to a common substance. From clockwork and cadavers to engines and energy, this volume reveals our long-standing fascination with and enduring commitment to the idea that bodies are machines and that machines are in some sense bodies. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the humanities and social sciences with interests in the sociology of science and technology, embodiment, cultural studies and the history of ideas.

"The Coming is powerful. And beautiful...This is a work to be proud of."--Charles Johnson, National Book Award winner for Middle Passage 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 and resolve of the African spirit. Extreme conditions produce extraordinary insight, and only after being stripped of everything do they discover the unspeakable beauty they once took for granted. This powerful, haunting novel will shake readers to their very souls. "Part homage to the proud and diverse cultures of Africa, part nightmare of the people stolen from those lands, The Coming seduces us with poetry, then breaks our hearts, but ultimately inspires us to celebrate the indomitable soul of humanity." --George Weinstein, author of Hardscrabble Road

Drawing on philosophical, neurological and cultural answers to the question of what constitutes a body, this book explores the interaction between mechanistic beliefs about human bodies and the successive technologies that have established and illustrated these beliefs. At the same time, it draws upon newer perspectives on technology and embodied human thought in order to highlight the limitations and inadequacies of such beliefs and suggest alternative perspectives. In so doing, it provides a position from which widely held assumptions about our relationship with technology can be understood and questioned, by both showing how these presuppositions have emerged and developed, and examining the extent to which they are dependent upon our grasp of specific technologies. Illustrated with examples from the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, as well as the industrial age and the recent eras of informatics, gene science and nanotechnology, Embodiment and Mechanisation highlights the ways in which technological changes have led to shifts in the definition of machine and body, investigating their shared underlying belief that all matter can be reduced to a common substance. From clockwork and cadavers to engines and energy, this volume reveals our long-standing fascination with and enduring commitment to the idea that bodies are machines and that machines are in some sense bodies. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the humanities and social sciences with interests in the sociology of science and technology, embodiment, cultural studies and the history of ideas.

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. "A morality tale of the consequences of letting our selfish needs trap the ones we love into roles they weren't born to play. The characters here are as flawed, their sins numerous, as any living human being held under the lens, but the author brings a compassion and understanding to their plights."--Mat Johnson, award-winning author of Invisible Things "Part cautionary tale, part folk tale, part fable, Daniel Black's Perfect Peace is a complete triumph...In Emma Jean Peace, Dr. Black has created a character as complex, equivocal and unforgettable as Scarlett O'Hara."--Larry Duplechan, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of Got 'Til It's Gone