THE LOVE SONGS OF W.E.B. DU BOIS by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a novel I purchased last year and then looked at for some time, daunted by the 790 page length.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a novel I purchased last year and then looked at for some time, daunted by the 790 page length. Shortly thereafter, I was lucky enough to attend a session at the Brisbane Writers Festival featuring Jeffers, and I started the novel that night.

Love Songs tells the story of Ailey, a woman of colour raised in the north of the USA but whose mother’s family was in Chicasetta, Georgia and this is where Ailey and her sisters spent their childhood summers. The novel traverses the intergenerational storied of mostly the women in Ailey’s family. These stories trace back several generations and through the stories of Indigenous ancestors, as well as black and white women in Ailey’s family.

This intersection of race in America over centuries give the development of Ailey’s story context. These stories are, at times, tragic, devastating, hopeful and triumphant.

Jeffers wrote this book over the course of a decade and her commitment to it is rewarded through a beautifully developed narrative, superb writing and a story that will stay with me for many years to come. Love Songs is a novel that feels intimidating due to its size and content, but this should not put readers off; this is, in fact, a masterful debut novel and one of the better novels I have read, ever.

I cannot recommend this novel highly enough.