The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois: An Oprah’s Book Club Novel

Written by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Narrated by Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton and Prentice Onayemi

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Aug 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9780062942975

Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a fiction writer, poet, and essayist. She is the author of five poetry collections, including the 2020 collection The Age of Phillis, which won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award, the George Washington Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She was a contributor to The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward, and has been published in the Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, and other literary publications. Jeffers was elected into the American Antiquarian Society, whose members include fourteen U.S. presidents, and is Critic at Large for Kenyon Review. She teaches creative writing and literature at University of Oklahoma. The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois is her first novel and was a New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, longlisted for the National Book Award, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and an Oprah Book Club Pick.

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

[Akua Bobson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful! Amazing epic of one family's intertwined intersections of history as may be representative of many American families. I absolutely loved reading this book.

[V Shep · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The best book I’ve ever read! Truly a masterpiece! Phenomenal

[Michael Sosin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Daunting. Complex. Troubling. Enlightening. Beautifully written and performed. How does one move on from the trauma to live real, honest and open?

[donnamariemerritt · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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. 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.

[leoslittlebooklife · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[nmele_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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. 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.

[etxgardener · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[bookczuk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[bostonbibliophile · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[beth.clarke · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 decades with Ailey and her family. An epic tale stretching back 300 years.

[brangwinn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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. 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.

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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 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.——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.

[thewanderingjew_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author; Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi, narratorWriting 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 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.

[hccpsk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 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.