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

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The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

An Oprah’s Book Club Novel

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Length 29 hours 48 minutes

Language English

Narrators Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton & Prentice Onayemi

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Bookseller recommendation

“A sweeping, multi-generational novel about a Southern Black family and their rich and complex ancestry. Focusing on the life of Hailey Pearl, a young woman coming of age in "the city" and her hometown of Chicasetta, GA, the novel jumps back and forth in time weaving together the triumphs and tragedies of her people and how these stories are passed or lost through the generations. Compelling and important read.”
— Samantha • A Great Good Place for Books

Bookseller recommendation

“This is the best book I’ve read this year. An ambitious debut novel tracing the history of one family against the backdrop of American history and showing the stories that are remembered and the ones that are forgotten.”
— Benedict Tanter • Main Point Books

Bookseller recommendation

“At 29 hours this one might seem like quite a commitment, but after traveling the century with them, you’ll deeply miss the echoes of the voices of Ailey and Belle and even good old Uncle Root.”
— Angie • The Country Bookshop

Bookseller recommendation

“Jeffers is an award-winning poet and Du Bois scholar from her days at Bard College, and she harnesses the power of poetry, deeply researched history, and compelling narrative to craft a multi-generational saga of a Southern Black family. POWERFUL!”
— Samantha • A Great Good Place for Books

Bookseller recommendation

“This book really won me over with its brilliant writing and entrancing story. Honestly, I was intimidated by the length and title (especially as someone who doesn't love poetry) but the blurb was so good and it sounded right up my alley. The narrators, Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton & Prentice Onayemi, all have gorgeous voices and immediately draw you in. It took a bit for me to get fully invested in the story but holy cow, Jeffers weaves an IMPRESSIVE tale. It was both too long and too short; I savored every word and was sad it when it was over. There is true talent in being able to hold your attention for 816 pages, especially for a slow burn of a literary novel and this one is well worth it in the end. With rich language, multi-generational family history, borderline poetic (and yet not intimidating poetic), this book is for fans of Pachinko, Homegoing, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, or any work of Jesmyn Ward's.”
— Kimi • Buttonwood Books and Toys

Summary
About the author

An instant New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today Bestseller • AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB SELECTION • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times • Time • Washington Post • Oprah Daily • People • Boston Globe • BookPage • Booklist • Kirkus • Atlanta Journal-Constitution • Chicago Public Library

Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel • Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction • Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction • Nominee for the NAACP Image Award

""Epic. . . . I was just enraptured by the lineage and the story of this modern African-American family. . . . I’ve never read anything quite like it. It just consumed me."" —Oprah Winfrey

The NAACP Image Award-winning poet makes her fiction debut with this 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.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Fiction Fiction - Literary

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a fiction writer, poet, and essayist. She is the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller and Oprah Book Club Pick, The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, and five poetry collections, including the NAACP Image Award-winning The Age of Phillis, also nominated for the National Book Award. A contributor to The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward, she teaches at the University of Oklahoma, where she holds the Paul and Carol Daube Sutton Chair in English.