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

3.0

This is a brilliant novel that I did not enjoy reading, so I'm struggling to rate it. The author has written a story of one family that spans 400 years of time - in doing so, she lays bare the generational trauma of rape and white supremacy. The many scenes of child abuse are well researched and based on slave narratives. (Tread lightly.) Connecting the lives of real families to the sociology of Du Bois, as well as challenging his work from a feminist lens, is an ambitious job for a work of fiction. I think it could have been done with more focus and narrative restraint. This is an important book for our time, but for me it lacks the intimacy and soul of books like Beloved and Their Eyes Were Watching God.