Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert

Darnell is the novel’s narrator and protagonist. He is characterized initially through his career. He is a record producer whose career stalled when he was publicly outed as a gay man more than a decade before Harriet Tubman hires him to produce her album, and he has spent the years in between both personally and professionally adrift. Darnell has complicated feelings towards the world of Hip-Hop. He is drawn to the art form for the way that it is both “by” and “for” African Americans. He feels that Black art forms are uniquely poised to tell Black stories and that they are part of the special cultural legacy that all African Americans share.

However, he is an outsider in the industry because he is a gay man. His mentor, too, was a closeted gay, Black man, and from him, especially Darnell learned that it was not possible to be “out” and respected during the early 2000s in the Hip-Hop and rap worlds. Queer sexuality was seen as “soft” and not “masculine enough.” Since Darnell comes of age knowing that he cannot be both a successful Black record producer and an out Black man, he internalizes society’s judgment and feels like a permanent outcast.