When did you stop hating your father?
It was really when I stopped looking at him as my dad and saw him as a human being. I don’t want anybody to die and never have a relationship with their children. If I’m looking from the outside, I would say, that’s a tragedy. It became more and more difficult for me to speak about grace all the time to everyone else, but not extend it to the people around me. Once I saw my father as a fallible human, then I could begin to wish for him what I wish for everyone else. The whole point of Christianity is that the story is not over as long as we draw a breath. Once I began to see him as someone in need of the grace of God, that gave me the strength to begin to hope for more for him.
I feel like his death speaks to a lot of my family’s story — that they were reaching for something and didn’t quite get there. And I would say that happens to a lot of black people in America. We are reaching for this promised land — this place where we can live our lives in peace and security. But a lot of us haven’t gotten there.
One of the most powerful moments of the book comes when you talk about your cousin Clarice, who contracted AIDS in the 1980s. You write about her death but also her victories in life, which you say were fleeting but still glorious.
Sometimes the only people who get nuanced are the famous, successful people. But the poor don’t get nuanced. They become one-dimensional characters. What I really wanted to say is no, you need to see my family. And by seeing them, you can see America.
There’s a high body count, or high death toll in the book. Because a lot of people died around me. And some of them died very young, under tragic circumstances. But that tragedy isn’t the only thing that is important about them.
One of the things that happens when someone dies is there’s kind of an assessment of that person’s life. We look at all of the things they may have done or may have been accused of doing. And because they made these mistakes in their past, we assume we know what they would have been in the future.
But the whole point of Christianity is that the plot twist is always right around the corner.
One more question. You are named for your father, but for years you’ve gone by your middle name, Daniel. But in the book, you begin to see your given name, Esau, in a different light. Why is that?
One of the questions I get, probably more than any other question, is, why do I have the name Esau? Because anyone who knows the story of Esau knows Esau isn’t the most heroic character. I always thought of him as the loser of the Bible, who sells his birthright for a bowl of pottage. But if you live with the text — you realize something different. Esau’s brother Jacob, who is the hero of the story in the Old Testament, is actually a scoundrel. He robbed and took advantage of his brother.
But in the end, when Esau had every right to condemn his brother, he forgives him and embraces Jacob. There’s a parallel with the story of the prodigal son — when the prodigal son is coming back home, and his father sees him — the father runs to embrace him. It’s the same language used to refer to Esau forgiving Jacob. I say to people all the time, Esau is paradigmatic of God’s forgiveness and undeserved mercy.
This article originally appeared here.
