2025 #44 The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois (Jeffers)

 

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.5 stars
Alright -- I'm going to start with a disclaimer. I did not know that it was 816 pages when I decided to listen to it as an audiobook. I'm not always as attentive when consuming literature as an audiobook, and my experience is sometimes too influenced by the voice actors, particularly if I don't enjoy their reading. That out of the way....

This is immense and epic, and digs deep into themes of addiction, racism, colorism (within Black communities too), historical relations between indigenous peoples and African Americans, sexual abuse, generational trauma...and more. It is a LOT for one novel to hold, and I wonder if it would have benefitted if trilogized (I just made up a word, I know). I can see, on the other hand, where that might have been a disadvantage -- threads would have been lost, as well as momentum.

The historical narratives resonated the most for me (hi, historian here!), and I appreciated the juxtaposition of Ailey reading about Samuel Prichard in the archives/ interviewing her relatives against the historical narrative so that we weren't just getting Ailey's perspective. The story is brutal in so many ways, and more importantly, it is true in its brutality. What the book has to tell us regarding generational trauma and how it can play out in a variety of ways, is invaluable. The novel is so massively interwoven, it is hard to say where cuts could have been made, but I do have a few things that diminished my experience of the book.

First, I really didn't care for the excruciating detail in describing Ailey's graduate studies. This may be totally personal. I have a PhD, and I'm a history professor, so perhaps I was having my own issues with grad school trauma, but I really didn't want to hear about footnotes versus endnotes. There were a lot of WHO CARES moments for me here. I get that not everyone is acquainted with the process of archival research, but I found these details a distraction from the more important substance of the research she was doing, as well as what she was processing. I also get that there was some mentoring happening with the cleaning of Dr. Oludara's office, but again -- I didn't need the details.

Second, in a case of the details were important but I only needed them once: Gandy. I had no issue with revisiting the situation generally, but playing out the scene, with similar descriptions, over and over and over? I don't generally need trigger warnings, and I am privileged I have never had to deal with that kind of trauma, but I started to feel so beaten down by the *description* (it is painful and disgusting) that it started to feel more about the shocking rawness of the image, rather than the shockwaves of the trauma. I can't imagine that my fatigue, however, is anything like the fatigue suffered by Lydia, Ailey, and Coco. This may be a very different experience from those who have lived through similar experiences, so I tread lightly considering this criticism. It may be more of a personal response to something that might be essential for other readers. For contrast, with a similar situation, we hear about Samuel's sins repeatedly (and effectively), but its always in the service of understanding the fuller picture of the tragedy--the forced silence (when life is on the line), the choices no human being should ever be forced to make, and the overarching theme of power.

My favorite character was Uncle Root, and I loved how he was voiced in the audiobook. You could hear his care, his intelligence, his pride in who he was, and his pride in Ailey. He served an important purpose for me as well -- occasionally I just didn't like Ailey very much. I needed Root's unconditional love of her to remind me how flawed we all are, and that like it or not, I probably had some real "moments" myself in my twenties. I struggled with the voicing of Ailey in the audiobook-- I felt her "little girl" voice/narrative never really left and I think that was part of my problem. I don't know if it was intentional, but it grated a bit.

I want to recognize my positionality here (white woman), because I think it is important. There's a lot in this book that I've never experienced, and likely never will experience. But that may be exactly the reason to read this book. The criticisms I mention above are quibbles relative to how this "epochal saga" (as Kirkus Reviews would have it) operates on SO MANY different levels: multi-generational history, coming-of-age story, family dynamics, polemics of perspectives (e.g. Du Bois v. Booker T. Washington)...just to name a few. There are stories wrapped in stories wrapped in stories, demanding an attention and care from the reader that few books even dare to achieve these days. The archival epilogue is a must read/listen for its beautiful array of sources -- do NOT skip it.



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