jackieeh's profile picture

jackieeh 's review for:

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
3.0

This book is good. Not just read-it-for-class-and-be-glad-it's-not-painful good, but actually good. I read it for a class I'm taking with Cornel West, and I can well believe his claim that this is a foundational text not just for African-American literature, but for American literature.
The fourth and second to last chapters, "Of the Passing of the First Born" and "Of the Coming of John" broke my heart.
There is some really wonderful playing with genres here as well: historical/factual, anecdotal, fictional, musical...it's all fair game, and it's all great.