The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois: An Oprah's Book Club Novel (Oprahs Book Club 2.0)

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Hardcover, 2021

Status

Available

Publication

Harper (2021), Edition: 1st Edition, 816 pages

Description

To come to terms with who she is and what she wants, Ailey, the daughter of an accomplished doctor and a strict schoolteacher, embarks on a journey through her family's past, helping her embrace her full heritage, which is the story of the Black experience in itself.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Hccpsk
With The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, National Book Award-nominated poet, Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, transitions to prose with an interesting subtlety to her words, but not to her story. Good grief is this book long—in length and reading as I found it difficult to move through as Jeffers language
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and narrative demand attention. Love Songs is a multi-generational family saga with Ailey Garfield at the center of the whirlwind that spirals back and forth through time to explain how Ailey and her family came to be—both physically and spiritually. I can see how difficult editing this book would be as each story and section feels important and emotional, but at some point, the circling back became too much for me. It’s too bad because this is a necessary story to tell and Jeffers writing deserves an audience, but 800 pages is a hard sell under the best of circumstances, and Love Songs is not that. For me, there’s just too many loops back, too much explanation, too many words. It should be noted that Jeffers tackles some very real but difficult subject matters (rape, incest, child abuse) with a quiet straightforwardness, but squeamish readers should be warned. Still, readers willing to take on this book will be rewarded with skilled story-telling and a critical subject.
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LibraryThing member Beth.Clarke
I loved the protagonist's story. Ailey has ups and downs and makes good and choices. Even though this epic is 800 pages, it's excellent. The novel spans generations and dives into the plantation owner, Samuel, and his tragic abuse of girls; However, most of the novel is set in the last couple of
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decades with Ailey and her family. An epic tale stretching back 300 years.
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LibraryThing member Dreesie
In this sweeping family saga Jeffers connects the past to the present, shows how various events in American history might have/did affect those that lived through them, and how history lives all around us. This is a masterpiece, and yes I will say "a great American novel". Two hundred and fifty
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years of history, many generations, multiple timelines, many historic events, and it all connects and she leaves nothing forgotten as she tells the story. The family tree in the front is a necessity, though it is not complete (because that would ruin some of the secrets that come out), and there are some minor discrepancies between the tree and the text, but they do not affect the story. You might want to take some extra notes.
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This novel looks at the American history of one mixed-race African-American family. From the 18th century and their Creek and Cherokee ancestors, to those taken from Africa and enslaved, to the white branch of the family. The youngest member of the family, Ailey Pearl Garfield, is the focus of the story, as she grows up in New York City but spends summers with her mother's family in Chicasetta, Georgia. She listens to her great-great uncle's stories, her great-grandmother's and grandmother's stories. Her grandmother still lives on the old Pinchard plantation/farm, where their ancestors were enslaved and where the last descendant of the white branch of the family still lives. They worship in the church originally built by post-Civil War sharecroppers, and live among other families who have also been there for generations. Ailey has dreams and visions about the women who came before her. When, in her late 20s, she decides to go to grad school in history, she focuses on the Pinchard family archives and finds more than she ever expected. A deep dive into various other archives and interviews lead her to even more discoveries and confirms stories she had long heard.
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LibraryThing member brangwinn
Don’t let the 800 pages of this book or the nearly 30 hours of the audiobook deter you from being immersed in the over 200-year-old story of a Black Georgia family. Beginning with the child of a Creek Indian woman, this is the story of strong women who kept overcoming challenge after challenge.
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Going back and forth in time, Jeffers tells the history of the family and centers her story around Ailey, the child of a medical doctor and a teacher, who is stubborn, curious, and opinionated. Jeffer’s skillful writing never lets us get lost in the details of the history stretching back to the 1700’s. The ancestors are as interesting and fleshed out as Ailey and her family are. The book is filled with interesting characters, and I suspect that many like me, will place Uncle Root as their favorite. His getting to meet both Dubois and Booker T Washington adds to the texture of the book as Professor Root tells stories about them and his own past. Yes, it’s a book of Black feminism. Ailey, her two sisters and her mother went to Black colleges. They are well aware of how Black women are expected to be towers of strength, but quiet in their power. W.E.B. Dubois’s writings interspersed between the chapters come alive in meaning as the family’s history comes alive. The best part of the 30 hours I spent listening to the story it never lagged. It built upon what had been before and when Ailey is ready to do her doctoral dissertation, you the reader are as immersed in what she is doing as she is.
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LibraryThing member bostonbibliophile
Really immersive epic of African-American history and family. Jeffers has written a masterpiece that moves around in time and in perspective and place, while always coming back to what's essential. It varies in tone from shift to shift in ways that are true to the characters and time being
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depicted. Jeffers has a deft hand for voice and characterization; it is not primarily a plot-driven book but readers looking for a rich character experience will get a lot of out of this book. And yeah it's long but you know what? You knew that going in.
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LibraryThing member bookczuk
Astounding book to which I am indebted for the great lessons learned via its words and characters. There is much to think upon. I regret that my brain seems to have atrophied and has forgotten how to study, learn, and teach. I am humbled. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers story, told through multiple
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characters and POVs is detailed, compelling, and a true wonder. Thank you. (And I'm a little in love with both Ailey and Uncle Root.)
Pandemic read.
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LibraryThing member hemlokgang
A well written story of both contemporary and historical life for African Americans in the United State, which I will admit that I didn't finish. The unique feature, for me, is that this story is explicit about the views held by many Black's about Whites. It also reveals a lot about day to day
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Black culture, which I enjoyed and found educational. My problem is that I felt I had read this story many times recently and am a bit burnt out.
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LibraryThing member etxgardener
I don’t give out 5-star ratings lightly, but this book is just stupendous. The author gives us the whole twisted history of African Americans as told as the saga of of one black family in Georgia, specifically through the voice of Ailey Pearl Garfield, the youngest member of the family.

Ailey
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knows that W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about the “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey has understood Du Bois’s words and has carried his problem on her shoulders.

Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a childhood trauma, as well as the stories of the women in her family reaching back two centuries. She hears their voices in her dreams & they all 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 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 of America itself.
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LibraryThing member thewanderingjew
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author; Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi, narrator
Writing a book review on this type of novel is full of pitfalls. A really honest review might result in name-calling in today’s angry environment. So, do I couch all my
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comments in cloaks of disingenuity or do I take my chances writing the unvarnished truth about what I think? Let’s hope the review is accepted as a review and nothing more. Using two narratives, one in the past and one taking us into a time closer to the present, Jeffers has created a unique narrative about racial issues everywhere.
I did like this book. It is beautifully written, for the most part. Introducing sections of the book with the quotes of a famous, very respected, though sometimes disagreed with, black human/civil rights activist, was brilliant. In two narratives, current and past, the history of slavery and black culture plays out against the backdrop of a racist America. It covers the racial history, from many directions. It points out the ineffective ways the blending of multiple cultures has failed. In America, beginning as early as the 1600’s (perhaps paying homage to the Critical Race Theory), fairly or unfairly, I am not that judge, it spans the next several hundred years, giving the reader a bird’s eye view of what it feels like to be trapped in one body or another, as it is subjected to the will of another, both violently and unjustly. The passion and the pain is very palpable throughout. The legacy of slavery’s lasting impact is real. The information and experiences expressed expose the fear and the hopelessness. I recommend the book, but I hope the reader will look further than its message. As a Jew, I could walk around and hate or resent every German or German ally, Every Muslim or Muslim country, or Japanese citizen past and present, but I choose to go forward and not to only look backwards to place blame and perpetuate the fear and the hate. This book, looks backward, and under the guise of taking us forward, sometimes seems to encourages the very racist beliefs we all want to abolish, by pointing finger after finger at negative ideas and imposing constant and continuing guilt. Also, today’s environment is actively erasing our history, not preserving it as the main character intends to do. If you only want to promote one message, you are dangerously close to walking in the shoes of your enemy. The book fails for me because it does not address how to overcome racism, but rather, like the books by Ibraim Kendi, Isabel Wilkerson, Robin DeNapoli, and others, they exacerbate the problem by exaggerating the number of racists that seem to be under every rock and in every cranny of society, without once observing positive improvements in society or offering a real solution to the problem or a way to overcome it. Rather, the universal message seems to be that everyone white is a racist, and always will be, and our history proves it, especially today, as history is being erased in the cause of racial justice. This book seems to encourage its preservation, which is laudable and very much the antithesis of present day tactics. I hope that idea, more than the unforgiveable sins idea, takes hold.
The main character, Ailey insists and exposes, through her intensive research into her own family history, which crossed color lines when family members were used as chattel, the insidious nature of the racism that is everywhere, even today. It is alive in those who are naïve and unaware that they are racist, but who wish to relieve themselves of the ignoble ideas that have been inculcated in them through our system of education. They are all without hope of any possibility of redemption and must be condemned. Thus, the book, exposes racism, but it also runs the risk of instigating reverse racism. It encourages those of a particular race to stay with and find comfort with, only those who are of their race. Are we to segregate again?
The novel also had too much sex for my liking. There was too much emphasis on it to define the main character who chooses to use her body like a mattress and then to treat that body like some offended, innocent victim because of past abuse. Not every female in black society flaunts her sexuality and not every male is sexually active above all else. Not every black female and/or male, has been assaulted. This book is unforgiving of all those they believe are sinners, and it seems that all are sinners. Still, the book is cloaked in powerful, lyrical prose which distracts us from the power struggle between the races that it seems to support.
The author has exposed the underbelly of racism, addiction, grief and loss, pedophilia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, racist policing, infidelity, poverty, even the Trail of Tears, secrets and lies, plus all the other ills of society with clarity, and it is never really overwhelming as all of these issues are addressed. The problem is that the responsibility for all of these ills, seems to always rest upon the shoulders of someone other than the victim’s, and in some cases, that is fair, but not in all. Those who disagree are portrayed as evil racists, who are always ignorant and always act with an intent to wound. The street is one-way. The black professor who encouraged discourse in his class, was in contrast with himself as the professor who gave his one-sided support to Ailey, hoping for her to be the first black historian to receive a doctorate at the University. It may be deserved, but her race seemed to be the most important issue. Her indignation for being looked at as undeserving because of Affirmative Action, seemed disingenuous. While the judgment may be rude and unfair, it is the byproduct of a program that did provide a leg up, for some. Whether or not she needed it or used it was immaterial. The professor, on the other hand, seemed to be seeking her views over all others, as if only hers were legitimate, and, unlike the ignorant, unqualified white students in the class, he believed she was brilliant and more qualified. For me, qualifications and quality of work should be the only criteria when judging scholarship. So, the novel is complicated, it covers a multitude of social ills, without sugar coating their effect. It illustrates their influence on past and future generations. However, today, one only has to watch television for a few moments to see that the black 13% of the population is now dominating the airwaves, and they, as a group, are achieving great success. Is the success due to the qualifications or the skin color? Are we merely exchanging one form of racism and rights issues for another? I hope not.
DuBois’s theory of double consciousness promotes a divide that doesn’t seem to be bridgeable because the black community of current writers seems to encourage power as opposed to justice for all, and also a separation of the races, with safe spaces, insisting that only certain races need safe spaces. Yet rising crime within those races may seem to indicate that the other races may need more safety than originally thought. Are we encouraging blindness to certain sides of the issues in society?
I am an American, and I am a Jew, but it does not cause a conflict within me any longer, although Jews have been oppressed for thousands of years. Isn’t it about time we all became Americans and stopped this identity politics which the book acknowledges and is perhaps unwittingly, promoting? I hope that the “Ailey’s of the world” find some peace and success without feeling all eyes are judging them as inferior. It appears to be more of a false premise today, in the same way it would be false for me to say that every black person is an anti-Semite because of certain members of Congress or prominent spokesmen in the Black world, like Cori Bush, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan and their supporters.
The protagonist, Ailey, wants to preserve history, even as her brothers and sisters today, in the 21st century, are tearing it down, erasing it in books, on college campuses, on historic battlegrounds and in town squares. The contrast with reality and the novel’s premise is stark.
The novel seems to be written more for women, and because it is so long, it will, sadly, discourage many from reading it. Slavery was a blight on our history. The Holocaust was a blight on our history. The lack of civil rights and women’s rights were also blights, etc. Isn’t it time we tried to move forward without these blights affecting our behavior and judgment. Isn’t it time to preserve our history and learn from it so we all became better people.
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LibraryThing member nmele
This novel is large in every way: covering centuries of history, an extensive family, and the story of both African-Americans and Native Americans and their relations with each other and with white Americans. At the same time, it is the story of one woman and her growth through much pain and loss.
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It is literature and it is a page turner. It is an education in and an exposition of the injustices which founded the U.S.A. And, it is hope for our future.
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LibraryThing member DonnaMarieMerritt
This masterpiece takes us from the 1700s when we were ripping Native Americans from their land through slavery to the modern day, where we still haven't learned to eradicate discrimination and prejudice. It's detailed and nuanced, necessarily brutal at times and tied together with the words of W.E.
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B. Du Bois.

For all its depth, I personally felt the end a bit disjointed, but then again, I'm not sure how you would wrap up a book that contains so much.

It's a must-read for everyone.
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LibraryThing member AdonisGuilfoyle
Ah, so close! When I started reading this novel, I was captivated by the dual narratives and excited to find a potential five star story to get me out of a three star slump. But there are nearly 900 pages to get through and only half of them are necessary, to the point where the author exhausted
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all of her best characters but kept regurgitating her fictional family tree, like a copy and paste Genesis. I was frustrated at the halfway mark and desperate by the final 100 pages but couldn't quit or even take a break to read another book, because I didn't want to DNF after wasting TWO WEEKS on one book.

Love Songs would be a great text to study at school, but a better editor was needed to fulfil the potential of such a powerful chronicle of Black American history. The present day characters should have shared the first person narration, telling their own stories in their own voices (especially poor Lydia), rather than focusing on Ailey and her terrible taste in men, while the historical chapters descended into melodrama and lost all credibility for me. I feel like Ailey's doctoral research would have explained the dark history of colonialism and slavery better than the omniscient narrator/oral tradition account of her Creek and African American ancestors.

So much to like and admire, but the story was weakened by the amount of research and themes packed into the overlong narrative.
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LibraryThing member KallieGrace
Wow. What a book to start the year with. This is massive, epic, brutal, beautiful, heart wrenching, and so very American. This is a black feminist novel, as the author says, and that perspective was challenging and inspiring. There are a lot of graphic, difficult themes that I normally wouldn't be
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able to get through, including a lot of brutal pedophilia. People, and nations, can't heal from their past until they reckon with it though, and so it is important to face those aspects of the past.
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LibraryThing member jonbrammer
An ambitious novel, with some minor flaws. It must difficult to find new ways to depict the horrors of slavery, but with the character of Thomas Pinchard, Jeffers devises a character whose depravity is sanctioned by the "peculiar institution." The characters of Scooter and Rebecca seem tacked on -
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it's unclear what purpose they serve, other than to add drama to Ailey's grad school experience. Otherwise, this was mostly riveting, a multilayered multigenerational narrative about trauma and resilience.
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LibraryThing member srms.reads
4.5⭐️

“We are the earth, the land. The tongue that speaks and trips on the names of the dead as it dares to tell these stories of a woman’s line. Her people and her dirt, her trees, her water.”

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers is a sweeping multigenerational saga
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that delves deep into the roots, the land , the ancestry and legacy of a mixed race African American family . The narrative switches between the past in the "Song" segments of the novel and the present day story narrated by Ailey Pearl Garfield .While the past segments span generations of her mother's family in Chicasetta in present day Georgia, the present day narrative starts with Ailey the youngest child of a doctor and a school teacher with two older sisters being raised in the 'city'.

When Ailey as an adult embarks on researching her family's history, her lineage is traced to its indigenous roots in the Creek village and the land which was taken from its indigenous owners only to be allotted to settlers who bring with them slave labor from Africa to work the plantations they build on the very same land in pre-Civil War America.

This is a lengthy read and to be honest I was intimidated by the sheer volume of this book which is why I had put it aside in favor of other books . But I was pleasantly surprised at how engaging this novel was and the amazing journey this story takes us on spanning decades of the history of a nation and its people . Ailey's personal experiences with abuse, loss, grief and search for her own purpose in life and a place in her own family connects with the stories of those who came before her -racially diverse generations of grandparents, aunts, uncles , cousins and extended family. While Ailey's research takes her through a history of slavery and oppression, trauma and abuse, the present day narrative delves into issues pertaining to feminism, education, racial identity , shared trauma, sexual identity and substance abuse.

Compelling and immersive, emotional and informative , The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is an experience that I would definitely recommend.
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LibraryThing member decaturmamaof2
I don't even know where to start. As someone living in Georgia, on the land of the Muskogee, I feel this book is so so important to read. Yes it's "fiction" but it includes the lived experiences of Indigenous and Black people who lived here before me, and who live here now. Ms. Jeffers is such a
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gifted writer.
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LibraryThing member banjo123
I found this to be a great read, really engaging. I have gotten a bit tired of books with a dual time line, but in this case, it really serves the story. Ailey grows up upper middle class in the North; but really finds her home in Georgia, with her mother's people. Her experience there leads her to
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a PhD in history, and the chance to learn more about her ancestors; who include Creek Indian , white, and African Americans. There is, of course, a lot of trauma in that history, and we see how the trauma ripples through the generations.

At 800 plus pages, perhaps a tad long; I might have cut out some of Ailey's romantic and sexual entanglements. Her relationships with men were realistic, I thought, but went on a bit much. However, this is a small quibble, this is one of my top reads of the year, I was always happy to pick it up, and am sad now to be done with it.
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LibraryThing member leoslittlebooklife
Tonight I finished The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, an amazingly well written (Jeffers is a poet and that is clear from reading her gorgeously flowing prose) and beautiful, grand sweeping saga about a mixed race family from the nineteenth century up to our current
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one.

Its main character, Ailey, is a young woman who grows up in a financially well off family whose roots go back to enslaved Africans, native Americans and white European immigrants. This is a story of the brutal submission and abuse of black and native American people in the time of slavery in the state of Georgia. But also of today’s brutalities of sexual child abuse and covert racism.

And it is a love song of family, of shades of color within a single family, of passing as white, about secrets, drug addiction, gender roles, social codes, and love and attraction that are stronger than anything.

I devoured this novel, all through its 800 pages and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Set in both the city and the rural South and in academic environments.

So if you like a family saga, or an academic novel, or an engaging story, or looking for some fantastic prose, this is a novel to read.
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LibraryThing member froxgirl
This complex-yet-simple novel has several running themes: appreciation of family, ancestry, and pride in both; the importance of a college education; and the essential nature of storytelling. Beginning with a escaped slave who is welcomed into a Creek Indian village in 1733, the saga of the
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Garfield family of Chicasetta, Georgia (which began as a native settlement and became a plantation and then a quiet backwater, is a character onto itself) and their relations with their white enslavers and with an HBCU, Routledge University. The main character, Ailey Garfield, is the youngest of three daughters, and is supported by her parents, her sister Lydia, who succumbs to addiction, and her Uncle Root, her primary cheerleader and a former professor at Routledge. Along the journey, Ailey becomes involved with several cruel boyfriends as she tries to define her purpose and not to waste her noble heritage. The audio book is voluminous, but the readers and the words are enthralling through the entire 30 hours.
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Awards

Language

Original language

English
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