THE PLOT: ‘The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois’ by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a family saga about generational trauma rooted in slavery and sexual assault. Ailey Garfield spends her summers in her mother’s hometown of Chicasetta, Georgia. Her maternal line stretches back two centuries to the native Americans born on the land and the African slaves forced to work it. As we go through Ailey’s story, multiple timelines journey into her family’s past through ancestors – Indigenous, Black and white – and the legacy of oppression and resistance in her bloodline.

SUMMARY: Trigger warning: this book was a whole lot of trauma. Personally, I wasn’t prepared for the level of paedophilia and sexual assault in every timeline. And, at 800 pages, it felt very heavy on my heart and took a long time to read. However, I’m glad I read this because the writing is beautiful and the story is powerful. It’s a moving story of women standing up for themselves in the very worst conditions. Although I found it a bit laborious to get through and I kept getting confused at how the characters connected, this book isn’t just literary fiction or historical fiction or family saga. It’s a work of art and the true definition of a masterpiece. You can tell the author had a clear vision and something to say, and she says it beautifully. In my opinion, you can’t ask much more from a novel than that.

GOOD BITS: The complexity and layering of the themes, particularly assault, colourism, slavery and legacy, was executed so well. My favourite bits were the past timelines. I was so invested in the maternal lineage and the difficult dynamics of being mixed race due to sexual assault and rape during slavery. If I’m honest, I felt a bit disappointed whenever we went back into Ailey’s timeline because I wanted to spend more time in the past. (Ailey was also a bit spoiled and bratty IMO but perhaps that’s because she was juxtaposed with historical figures who went through such huge hardships).

NOT SO GOOD BITS:  You can tell the author really crafted and laboured over this story so my criticisms are completely subjective. However, I feel like Carole/Coco was done dirty by the main storyline. I kept waiting for her perspective but it never came and she was left picking up the pieces and holding the family together time and time again. The bond between Lydia and Ailey was so exclusionary, I feel like the book would’ve been more well-rounded with Carole’s point of view, especially since she went through the same trauma. Additionally, I liked that she was a queer character and think there was a missed opportunity to explore this further.

OVERALL: I’d recommend this book to fans of ‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison, ‘A Little Life’ by Hanya Yanagihara and ‘The Color Purple’ by Alice Walker. If you want to invest in a long book and let it take you deeply into the souls of each character, I’d highly recommend this novel.

This book is available to purchase (with a discount) on my bookshop.org page.