Song of My Songs
A Black gay storyteller comes of age in Isaac’s Song by Daniel Black
Daniel Black’s ninth book, Isaac’s Song, is a novel about Black gay becoming in the 1980s. This work lives in the same universe as his 2022 novel Don’t Cry for Me.
Like the earlier book, written in epistolary style, Isaac’s Song employs a nontraditional format, constructed around a set of visits with a therapist and interspersed with memories that are each titled as a numbered “Day.” The novel dunks us into the colorful life and language of Isaac Swinton, carrying us through recollections of his rigid childhood in Missouri and life in Chicago amidst the AIDS crisis.
The book is woven throughout with a metanarrative of the protagonist’s writing — in essence, his song. It begins with the impromptu bedtime story his mother tells him about a little boy with his name who has brown skin and curly hair: “I told Mom, ‘I like the story of the boy with my name.’ She hollered, shook her head, and said, ‘It’s you, honey. The story is about you. It’s your song.’” The protagonist takes over the metanarrative, which, although abstract at times, never seems to wander from themes of family and self-worth.
Readers familiar with Don’t Cry for Me will recognize Isaac as the addressee of the father’s letters in that book. Considered together, the novels are a cosmic statement on Black masculinity, queerness, forgiveness, and thriving. All efforts toward love count, Black’s protagonists seem to suggest, even when that work is done with those who have already returned to the earth.
Though it’s not necessary for comprehending the storyline of Isaac’s Song, readers with a basic understanding of African spirituality will extract deeper meaning from this novel. In African spirituality, the dead do not simply disappear from the world. As Isaac tells his therapist, “We studied African ancestral reference in college, and my professor spoke of ancestors as real people — with emotions and opinions and preferences like other living beings. Just without a body. I think I’ve always believed that. Even as a kid, I knew dead people weren’t dead.”
Daniel Black, who grew up in Arkansas and is a professor of African American Studies at Clark Atlanta University, is a prolific novelist and the author of Black on Black, a 2023 collection of essays on race in America. Isaac’s Song will certainly not be his last novel, but it does feel like a magnum opus. It is laden with metacommentary. A storyteller (Black) writes about a storyteller (Isaac), who writes stories. An African American gay man who came of age in the 1980s (Black) walks us through the journey of a gay man coming of age in 1980s Chicago (Isaac). The parallels are tight enough for us to see Black baring his soul, but not so much that the storylines and nuances are collapsed. This is Isaac’s song, this is Daniel’s song, but many will encounter the familiar notes and exclaim They’re singing my song.
Through a wider lens, the novel is a reflection on ancestry, memory creation, and homeland. Isaac’s Song is a book for this moment, when the dying strictures of masculinity are being revived and reinstituted across the country. Isaac is a model for how to write yourself into being the hero of your own story, but his story is also a paradigm for ways that we recognize rest and agency for the ancestors. Black has written a novel for lovers, parents, and anyone who is longing for home. For anyone who would string the days of their complicated life into song.
Kashif Andrew Graham is a writer and theological librarian who received the 2023 Humanities Tennessee Fellowship in Criticism. He enjoys writing poetry on his collection of vintage typewriters and is at work on a novel about an interracial gay couple living in East Tennessee.
