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4.6 AVERAGE
4.6 AVERAGE
slow-paced
Honoree Fanonne Jeffers has created a brilliant master piece in this sweeping historical fiction. It is a love song to everything Black culture and a epic in its scope. It reminded me of Marquez’s “100 Years of Solitude” but with the magical realism expressed in the emotional kaleidoscope of the Black and Native experience in America from time immemorial. You will not get through this fast. Resign yourself to be only a long spiritual journey through a family against the racially tinged struggle that is America.
If you venture to read “The Love Songs…” please please please first read “The Souls of Black Folk,” “The 1619 Project,” “Caste,” and any other books you can on the unabashed history of America. You cannot truly appreciate the fiction part of this historical fiction until the gritty history is baked into your DNA. Only then will you realize how brilliantly Jeffers has weaved in multiple narratives and threads into this one tome. Through her well thought out characters we get an all too personalized retelling of our collective history as it concerns every facet of life.
Those deep dives into various topics make every page a journey of historical reckoning, navigating academia and it’s rigors, love and loss, race relations, blood ties, and so much more. The bitter reality it is painted against makes the collective stories feel like our own in a laugh out loud, cry out when triggered, reflective in others kind of way. It is everyone’s story and Ailey’s at the same time. I sincerely believe W.E.B Du Bois would have been proud of Jeffers bringing his long cherished pieces into the present with what I think has to be her Magnum Opus.
If you venture to read “The Love Songs…” please please please first read “The Souls of Black Folk,” “The 1619 Project,” “Caste,” and any other books you can on the unabashed history of America. You cannot truly appreciate the fiction part of this historical fiction until the gritty history is baked into your DNA. Only then will you realize how brilliantly Jeffers has weaved in multiple narratives and threads into this one tome. Through her well thought out characters we get an all too personalized retelling of our collective history as it concerns every facet of life.
Those deep dives into various topics make every page a journey of historical reckoning, navigating academia and it’s rigors, love and loss, race relations, blood ties, and so much more. The bitter reality it is painted against makes the collective stories feel like our own in a laugh out loud, cry out when triggered, reflective in others kind of way. It is everyone’s story and Ailey’s at the same time. I sincerely believe W.E.B Du Bois would have been proud of Jeffers bringing his long cherished pieces into the present with what I think has to be her Magnum Opus.
adventurous
dark
emotional
inspiring
medium-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:
Yes
I listened to this book on Audible first and immediately upon finishing it, purchased the physical copy to begin reading through it again.
What an epic story woven in the most delicious way. It was horrifying and hopeful, while unexpected it felt like a story I knew all too well. It captured so many facets of Black American life; especially for those of us from the south. It felt like home to me. I'll revisit this one again and again.
If the length is deterring you...think again. It's worth every page.
What an epic story woven in the most delicious way. It was horrifying and hopeful, while unexpected it felt like a story I knew all too well. It captured so many facets of Black American life; especially for those of us from the south. It felt like home to me. I'll revisit this one again and again.
If the length is deterring you...think again. It's worth every page.
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-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:
Complicated
Ive been trying to get back into reading long books and I loved this multi-generational family saga. Primarily the story of three sisters in the 1990s-2000s, whose family’s roots are in Georgia, it interweaves the brutal history of enslavement and the story of the land some of the family still lived on in Georgia, as well as the story of her parents meeting at an all Black college and moving to the city I the 1960s. All the parts are tied together beautifully.
dark
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-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:
Complicated
While long, the book unfolded at a good pace. It has many layers of feminism, racial politics, womanhood, American history, and intersectionality. Ailey is lovable and complex, but the book is so much more than her story. It was reminiscent of a longer Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing with more literary influence.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Drug use, Incest, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Colonisation
I mean it's a pretty perfect book honestly. It is long but, as I've read on reviews, I'd agree, that there isn't a page that isn't worth including. I've never read a book like it, maybe because in the UK we don't really focus on a lot of history of slavery, Indigenous people or early America/Civil War periods. I wonder why (when I guess really, I know why), considering the role we had. It was great at framing the very complex ancestral links between the current story and the story in the past but in a way that was very smoothly connected. It was confusing at first because I found myself trying to connect all the family members exactly but I realised it really doesn't matter, the point is that we are all connected in some way or another. It was very interesting, full, varied and thoughtful.
I don’t think I’ve even fully wrapped my head around how much I loved this book. The characters lived off the pages and in my mind. So beautifully written, so descriptive, as if I was reading a nonfiction family story. At a loss for words for how much I loved this book. Highly recommend and I would read again
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No