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

 

Hello my lovely readers!

I just finished this chonker of a book and oh.my.goodness. The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers. What a book. What a beautiful, beautiful book. It's 800 plus pages and every single word is so meaningful, so wonderful, so eloquent. Let's get into it.

SUMMARY

Ailey Pearl Garfield comes from a maternal line reaching back two centuries. She is raised up North in the city most of the year, but spends her summers in the South in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta. It's where her mother's family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa.

As Ailey grows, we see her confront the issues of her family's past, present and future. To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family's past, uncovering the tales of generations of her ancestors--Indigenous, Black and white--in the deep South.

MY THOUGHTS

This book was definitely written by a poet. The writing was so beautiful, so melodic. It was as if this novel was singing to me.

I love that most of the characters were flawed people. Ailey got on my nerves so many times, but I could still appreciate her, navigating her way through life and who she is as a growing girl/woman in this coming-of-age novel. No one is perfect in this novel, not the parents, certainly not the grandparents, not Ailey, not her sisters...NO ONE.

This book deeply resonated with me as I'm currently doing my own genealogy research and am finding/using some of the documents Ailey comes across. Learning about who you are and where you come from is the bravest thing I think a person can do.

The book is definitely long and I could've gone without the Ailey and Scooter romance toward the end. It really added nothing to her journey. The same goes for Samuel and Ezekiel and the children. I know Jeffers wanted to portray pure evil, but it felt kind of like overkill. Also, the format of the book with the songs, subsections etc was confusing at times. And lawd, don't get me started on the main narrator for the audiobook. Oof.

Aside from those minor things, this book was amazing. It is a true testament and celebration of Black womanhood.