Rewarding
5 stars
It is hard work at times. There are some very very harrowing parts, but it is a beautiful, absorbing honourable book.
eBook, 816 pages
English language
Published July 15, 2021 by Harper.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
5 stars
(4 reviews)
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 …
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. (source)
Review of 'The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
3.5 stars. This novel had a great heart, and I was inspired by its characters, but it tried too hard to check every box of the experience of Black women in America — including sororities at HBCUs, the Muscogee Nation in Florida, encountering white history school classmates who want to talk about the “good” slave owners, urban gentrification, Southern food culture, and hair textures — such that some of the plot points seemed artificially shoehorned in. As an audio book listener, I also found it difficult to follow the relationships of all the families as the book flipped back and forth through time (a character chart is available from the publisher). However, I appreciated the book’s epic scope and the way it tied the historical plot lines together in the present day. I’d recommend it, but wish it had had a stronger editor to trim out some of the more …
3.5 stars. This novel had a great heart, and I was inspired by its characters, but it tried too hard to check every box of the experience of Black women in America — including sororities at HBCUs, the Muscogee Nation in Florida, encountering white history school classmates who want to talk about the “good” slave owners, urban gentrification, Southern food culture, and hair textures — such that some of the plot points seemed artificially shoehorned in. As an audio book listener, I also found it difficult to follow the relationships of all the families as the book flipped back and forth through time (a character chart is available from the publisher). However, I appreciated the book’s epic scope and the way it tied the historical plot lines together in the present day. I’d recommend it, but wish it had had a stronger editor to trim out some of the more artificial plot points and slim down the length (the audio book is 30 hours).
