Song of Myself is the sto­ry of Daniel Dell Blake, a gay man nav­i­gat­ing his way through a tumul­tuous twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. His rites of pas­sage, includ­ing embrac­ing his iden­ti­ty, gar­ner­ing self- respect, and liv­ing with irre­press­ible cre­ativ­i­ty, will res­onate for read­ers con­fronting today’s cul­ture wars. Daniel’s strug­gles against soci­etal norms, infused with wit, cel­e­brate human resilience while offer­ing his­tor­i­cal insight, punc­tu­at­ed through­out by quotes from Walt Whit­man, whose life and writ­ings serve as a touch­stone — to the nar­ra­tor and to the read­er — a tes­ta­ment to how truth and pride, and even hum­ble efforts in the midst of mon­u­men­tal events become (in Whitman’s words) ​“the jour­ney-work of the stars.”