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makeemouse 's review for:
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Ms. Jeffers says in her acknowledgments that she is “here on this earth to tend Ancestral altars.” Her muse in particular is W.E.B. Du Bois: “My novel isn’t based on his life, but rather on the lives of the inhabitants of one (fictitious) town in Georgia, a place he lived for years.”
This is an elegy for an American family line that weaves the cultures of a West African Muslim village, the Creek tribe, and the 18th century European settlers who stole the land from the indigenous and became slave owners.
In the present day, Ailey is a young girl growing up in Baltimore who is grappling with the joys and strains of her loving family, in both the north and in Chicasetta, Georgia.
I loved the time jumps between Ailey and her ancestors as the story unfolds. It is a multi-faceted way to grapple with the oppression and suffering and all that was lost. Ailey gains clarity as her intellectual understanding blossoms. The colorism, racism, and sexism woven into US history comes into focus too, for me as the reader. Ailey recognizes the beauty and power of her legacy, their songs. Her agency is positive and hopeful.
This is an elegy for an American family line that weaves the cultures of a West African Muslim village, the Creek tribe, and the 18th century European settlers who stole the land from the indigenous and became slave owners.
In the present day, Ailey is a young girl growing up in Baltimore who is grappling with the joys and strains of her loving family, in both the north and in Chicasetta, Georgia.
I loved the time jumps between Ailey and her ancestors as the story unfolds. It is a multi-faceted way to grapple with the oppression and suffering and all that was lost. Ailey gains clarity as her intellectual understanding blossoms. The colorism, racism, and sexism woven into US history comes into focus too, for me as the reader. Ailey recognizes the beauty and power of her legacy, their songs. Her agency is positive and hopeful.