The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois - by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Book Synopsis

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021

AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB SELECTION

LONG-LISTED FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT NOVEL - LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION - A FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION - SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE - LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE - A NOMINEE FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD

A New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year - A Time Must-Read Book of the Year - A Washington Post 10 Best Books of the Year - A Oprah Daily Top 20 Books of the Year - A People 10 Best Books of the Year - A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year - A BookPage Best Fiction Book of the Year - A Booklist 10 Best First Novels of the Year - A Kirkus 100 Best Novels of the Year - An Atlanta Journal-Constitution 10 Best Southern Books of the Year - A Parade Pick - A Chicago Public Library Top 10 Best Books of the Year - A KCRW Top 10 Books of the Year

An Instant Washington Post, USA Today, and Indie Bestseller

Epic.... I was just enraptured by the lineage and the story of this modern African-American family.... A combination of historical and modern story--I've never read anything quite like it. It just consumed me. --Oprah Winfrey, Oprah Book Club Pick

An Indie Next Pick - A New York Times Book Everyone Will Be Talking About - A People 5 Best Books of the Summer - A Good Morning America 15 Summer Book Club Picks - An Essence Best Book of the Summer - A Washington Post 10 Books of the Month - A CNN Best Book of the Month - A Time 11 Best Books of the Month - A Ms. Most Anticipated Book of the Year - A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of the Year - A BookPage Writer to Watch - A USA Today Book Not to Miss - A Chicago Tribune Summer Must-Read - An Observer Best Summer Book - A Millions Most Anticipated Book - A Ms. Book of the Month - A Well-Read Black Girl Book Club Pick - A BiblioLifestyle Most Anticipated Literary Book of the Summer - A Deep South Best Book of the Summer - Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award

The 2020 NAACP Image Award-winning poet makes her fiction debut with this National Book Award-longlisted, magisterial epic--an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer--that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era.

The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called "Double Consciousness," a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois's words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans--the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers--Ailey carries Du Bois's Problem on her shoulders.

Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother's family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that's made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, 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 own 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.

Review Quotes

"The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is epic in its scope. [It] traces the story of a family, the town in Georgia where they come from, and their migration outward over generations. The word epic is overused these days, but this book was meant to be an epic and it is. . . . This is one of the most American books I have ever read. It's a book about the United States. It's a book about the legacy of slavery in this country. . . . And it's also a book about traumas and loves that sustain over generations."--Noel King, NPR

"A feat of beauty and breadth."--Time, 100 Must-Read Books of the Year

"A sweeping matriarchal epic that leads readers through a majestic tour of race, family, and love in America, this striking debut novel by an award-winning poet is, indeed, the Great American Novel at its finest."--Joshunda Sanders, Boston Globe's Best Books of the Year

Stunning.--People, Top 10 Books of the Year

"[An] ambitious début novel, by a noted poet. . . . Jeffers amasses details, richly rendering suffering and resistance." --New Yorker

"Stupendously good. . . . Jeffers' renditions of Black family traditions and the burden of respectability politics are spot-on, and made me wish the book was even longer."--Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR Best Books of the Year

"This sweeping, brilliant and beautiful narrative is at once a love song to Black girlhood, family, history, joy, pain . . . and so much more. In Jeffers's deft hands, the story of race and love in America becomes the great American novel."--Jacqueline Woodson, author of Red at the Bone and Another Brooklyn

"Triumphant. . . . Quite simply the best book that I have read in a very, very long time. . . . An epic tale of adventure that brings to mind characters you never forget: Meg Murry in A Wrinkle in Time, Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn. . . . The historical archives of Black Americans are too often filled with broad outlines of what happened. . . . One of the many triumphs of Love Songs is how Jeffers transforms this large history into a story that feels specific and cinematic in the telling. . . . Just as Toni Morrison did in Beloved, Jeffers uses fiction to fill in the gaping blanks of those who have been rendered nameless and therefore storyless. . . . A sweeping, masterly debut."--Veronica Chambers, New York Times Book Review

"Whatever must be said to get you to heft this daunting debut novel by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, I'll say, because The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is the kind of book that comes around only once a decade. Yes, at roughly 800 pages, it is, indeed, a mountain to climb, but the journey is engrossing, and the view from the summit will transform your understanding of America. . . . With the depth of its intelligence and the breadth of its vision, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is simply magnificent."--Ron Charles, Washington Post

"With The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Jeffers has created an opus, an indelible entry to the canon of contemporary American literature and one of the foundational fictional texts of Black literature worthy of sitting alongside Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing."--Latria Graham, Atlanta Journal-Constitution