Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

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

38 reviews

thewairimu's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

erebus53's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This is a book I was recommended by a member of an online book club. I really had no idea what it would be about and sometimes I like to go into things with no preconceptions. The focus of this book is telling an intergenerational story of a family. It is fiction, but has the feel of several intergenerational narratives I have liked, such as Wild Swans. The focus of the narrative is Feminist and is an account of the history of Black Americans in the South (specifically Georgia).

Having read Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, and Legendborn by Tracy Deonn, a lot of the plot points of this book were familiar. If you haven't learned much about the Antebellum South, this could be quite rough going. As a historian (main character) Ailey Pearl Garfield is often shaken, and moved to tears, by the accounts she unearths about happenings in her family's past.

This story is nuanced, and the characters feel like people rather than archetypes. Weaving a history filled with trauma would be pretty much impossible without some levity and there is a lot of dialogue that lightens the mood. Some of the humour is utterly hilarious and there are often call-backs to information about minor characters that pepper the backstory with shared in-jokes and form a real sense of this family inhabiting a rich world and community. There are a couple of LGBT characters in the story, and a family history of Dyslexia which becomes apparent as Ailey digs deeper into her family's story.

I could write an entire page to describe the content warnings... but I won't. Let's just say that Racism is the tip of a horrible, bloody iceberg, and that genocide, sexual abuse, physical abuse, suicide, drug addiction, miscarriage, gaslighting and oppression of various forms are all in this book. It's a big book.. there are a lot of words.. and not all of it is pretty.

The Audiobook is beautifully narrated by 3 different voice talents, and the story spans several different timelines, so if you are "reading" by Audiobook it's a good idea to download the supplemental material that lists the genealogy of the family, so you don't get lost.

Thoroughly recommend this book. I found myself really excited by some revelations near the end and more than once I got body chills and frisson from emotionally resonant bits. This would be a great bookclub read if you have people who read at about the same pace, and don't mind tomes that exceed 800 pages.

Content Warnings

bugzecat's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

There is much to say about this book. It’s the longest book I’ve ever read and I simply don’t have the words to express how deeply this book affected me at times.

Content Warnings

cuddlygryphon's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

welkinvault's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

This multigenerational tome was chosen purely as it was recommended by a book youtuber I follow. I really wanted to like this, but it was though I was reading a different novel to them. I started with this 30 hour audio but after a few hours bought the book too as I thought it was my fault that I found huge chunks of the novel long, flat and two dimensional (even though the narration was very good).

The historical sections were interesting (although too much sexual violence reported almost in passing with little effort to show the impact on the survivors or the community). The more contemporary main storyline of the very immature, precocious, Ailey and her romances was lengthly and not engaging. As a coming of age story I found I was largely uninterested in her growth or her ridiculous reasonings for her prickly and almost combative realations with her school/undergraduate peers.

That is until about the 550 page mark when the book started to tie together all the threads, Ailey finally gained some maturity and the emotional resonance that was missing from the first chunk of the novel was delivered (especially in the historical scenes). At that point I found I could not put the book down.

The character of Root was fasciating, and I did want to know what happened to Nick, but for such a sprawling choppy work the author did a great job in tying up so many threads at the conclusion of the novel.

Content Warnings

annie26's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

There are books and there are BOOKS, this one falls into the latter category. There are few books that you read in life where you know that you won’t be the same upon finishing it. You know that it’ll permeate your mind, your thoughts , your whole being and that is what Jefferson’s exploration of the history of America through the intergenerational story of Ailey’s family story. This is a very hard book to read at times but I’m so grateful for it. I’m so filled with gratitude for the stories of black people everywhere, for the stories of native Americans and for the stories of my own ancestors. What a beautiful saga of a story. An instant forever fave.

Content Warnings