GJ’s family is an anomaly. Samuel, his uneducated strongman father, respected for his brawn and violent aggression, acts as a conscientious, nurturing single parent, rearing his infant son in the 1950s when men were not their children’s primary caregivers. Despite his father’s typical Black masculinity, he intuitively understands his son’s emerging gay nature as innate. GJ’s mother, a child of Black middle-class privilege from the neighboring suburbs, is an absent parent, primarily engaged with living the rooming life, consisting of drink and abandon.

GJ’s young life progresses, and he is thrust forth into circumstances both familiar and violently surreal, from typical bullying to standing as the principal witness in a murder trial to defend his father. Colorful characters like wild Uncle NapPo, the seemingly unflappable Miss Carrie, and his father’s employer, the curious Mr. Blu, inform him of life’s complexity.

The wide-eyed boy grows into his teens and twenties and is altogether victimized, loved, and enlightened, leading him to experience the full range of gay life. GJ learns the culture and codes of Washington’s insular Black gay bar scene as the teen partner of a man in his thirties. As GJ starts to relish his gay existence, becoming more confident with his gay identity and his family’s unconventionality, he continues to question himself, fighting self-doubt and consternation about fitting into Black respectability norms or the mainstream world. GJ’s adult existence and early professional life extend into the integrated world of Dupont Circle gay bars and Georgetown professional offices, where he finds the love of his life and soulmate.

The One Who’s Gonna See You Through is a work that bridges the commercial/literary divide. The gay interracial theme here is seldom explored, and the absent mother/loving father configuration brings a different lens to this work. The approach to story in The One Who’s Gonna See You Through sets the more familiar trope of the angry, Black, homophobic father aside and abandons the more well-trodden storyline of steadfast single Black motherhood. By story’s end, GJ recognizes that his father’s early and invaluable acceptance of difference laid the foundations for the happiness and realization he has experienced as a gay man throughout life. He resolves within himself that he must finally accept his legitimacy as both a Black man and an upper-middle-class one.