The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
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4.5 • 13 Ratings
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK
‘Deeply moving’ Sarah Winman, author of Still Life
‘Remarkable’ Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish)
‘A sweeping epic … Outstanding’ Daily Mail
Immerse yourself in a celebration of Black womanhood and an epic tale of the stories that span generations.
Ailey Pearl Garfield grows up between the City in the north and summers spent in her mother’s small hometown of Chicasetta, Georgia. From an early age, she finds herself in a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hurt in her past, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.
To come to terms with her identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.
‘Mesmerising… magnificent’ Independent
‘Astonishing… A great work infused with love and honesty’ Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple
‘Gripping, gorgeous. A sweeping family saga that is also history at its most intimate and vital’ Stef Penney, author of The Tenderness of Wolves
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION • SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN LITERARY PRIZE
New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year • Time 10 Best Books of the Year • Washington Post 10 Best Books of the Year • People 10 Best Books of the Year • Booklist 10 Best First Novels of the Year
About the author
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a fiction writer, poet, and essayist. She is the author of five poetry collections, including The Age of Phillis, which won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry, was longlisted for a National Book Award, and was a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry. She was a contributor to The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward, and has been published in the Kenyon Review, the Iowa Review, and other literary magazines. Jeffers was elected into the American Antiquarian Society, whose members include fourteen US presidents, and is a critic at large for the Kenyon Review. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Oklahoma.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Experience the history of America—and the country’s legacy of racism—through one family’s powerful saga. For as long as she can remember, Ailey Pearl Garfield and her older sisters have left the city during summer vacation to spend time with their country relatives in Georgia. As Ailey grows up, she begins to notice the dark undercurrents of those idyllic visits, eventually coming to terms with a legacy of secrets, violence and shame that have shaped her family. In her debut novel, acclaimed poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers weaves together past and present storylines into an epic-length (800+ pages!) novel we got so thoroughly drawn into that we hated to put it down for even a minute. Spanning from the beginning of the slave trade to the first Obama campaign, Jeffers’ book follows multiple generations of Ailey’s family, exploring their dramas, strength and love. From Ailey’s earliest childhood memories to the fascinating and sometimes tragic lives of her ancestors, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois alternates between moments of terror and spiritual triumph. This unforgettable, uniquely American saga isn’t just the story of one family—it’s the story of how the U.S. was created, and its sins and salvations ever since.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet Jeffers (The Age of Phyllis) debuts with a staggering and ambitious saga exploring African American history. Ailey Pearl Garfield, the youngest daughter of Geoff Garfield, a light-skinned Washington, D.C., physician, and Belle Driskell Garfield, a Southern school teacher, reckons with ancestral trauma while growing up in the 1980s and '90s. Throughout, historical sketches (or "songs") link Ailey to her ancestors: Creeks, enslaved Africans, and early Scot slave owners. Ailey follows in the footsteps of her parents, attending the southern HBCU where they met and married as undergraduates before moving north to the "City," where Geoff attended medical school at Mecca University (a thinly veiled Howard). W.E.B. Du Bois's theories emerge in epigraphs throughout and are sagaciously reflected in the plot, as the accounts of Ailey's college life correspond to the "talented tenth." Later, tragedy unfolds as Lydia, Ailey's oldest sister who is haunted by childhood sexual abuse, succumbs to crack addiction. The multigenerational story bursts open when Ailey unearths some unknown family history during her graduate studies, as well as secrets of the Black female founder of her family's alma mater. Themes of family, class, higher education, feminism, and colorism yield many rich layers. Readers will be floored.
