Don’t Cry For Me — Book Review

Being a Black man is hard. But not for the reasons one might immediately think. It would be easy for me to spend this entire review writing about the harms white supremacy has caused. It has. It would even be easy for me to spend this entire review talking about the devastating harm toxic masculinity has caused. It has.

It’s much harder and much more laudable to sit with all these truths and situate them within the context of a specific person, a specific family, without ignoring the spectre of history. Dr. Daniel Black has done this and done it well. Jacob Swinton, the main character and narrator, is homophobic. His rigid notions of masculinity, passed down as survival tactics, define much of his life but do not free him. They define much of his life, but do not help him love those he loves the most, particularly his son. At least, not in the ways he truly wants to. Instead they act as a slow acting poison, steadily destroying Jacob and ultimately rendering a fate worse than death, dying alone.

As I read this book, I thought about the men in my life. Father, uncles, grand-fathers, great-grandfathers. Some of them serve as examples. Others, lessons in loving through their mistakes. None of them are any one thing; Like Jacob, and like all human beings, they are divinely complicated.

This book helped me understand them more. Forgiveness and love are not one time actions. This book does not have a happy ending. It has a hopeful one. Hopefully, we heal. Hopefully, we love. Fully and unafraid. Our lives depend on it.