The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois: An Oprah's Book Club Novel

Description

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB SELECTION WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT NOVEL • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION • A FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION • SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE • A NOMINEE FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD A New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year • A Time Must-Read Book of the Year • A Washington Post 10 Best Books of the Year • A Oprah Daily Top 20 Books of the Year • A People 10 Best Books of the Year • A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year • A BookPage Best Fiction Book of the Year • A Booklist 10 Best First Novels of the Year • A Kirkus 100 Best Novels of the Year • An Atlanta Journal-Constitution 10 Best Southern Books of the Year • A Parade Pick • A Chicago Public Library Top 10 Best Books of the Year • A KCRW Top 10 Books of the Year An Instant Washington Post, USA Today, and Indie Bestseller "Epic…. I was just enraptured by the lineage and the story of this modern African-American family…. A combination of historical and modern story—I’ve never read anything quite like it. It just consumed me." —Oprah Winfrey, Oprah Book Club Pick An Indie Next Pick • A New York Times Book Everyone Will Be Talking About • A People 5 Best Books of the Summer • A Good Morning America 15 Summer Book Club Picks • An Essence Best Book of the Summer • A Washington Post 10 Books of the Month • A CNN Best Book of the Month • A Time 11 Best Books of the Month • A Ms. Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A BookPage Writer to Watch • A USA Today Book Not to Miss • A Chicago Tribune Summer Must-Read • An Observer Best Summer Book • A Millions Most Anticipated Book • A Ms. Book of the Month • A Well-Read Black Girl Book Club Pick • A BiblioLifestyle Most Anticipated Literary Book of the Summer • A Deep South Best Book of the Summer • Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award The 2020 NAACP Image Award-winning poet makes her fiction debut with this National Book Award-longlisted, magisterial epic—an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer—that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era. The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders. Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead. To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Similar books

• 

  The Age of Phillis

  By Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  Based on fifteen years of archival research, The Age of Phillis, by award-winning writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, imagines the life and times of Wheatley: her childhood with her parents in the Gambia, West Africa, her life with her white ...

• 

  Small World: A Novel

  By Jonathan Evison

  Jonathan Evison’s Small World is a novel that speaks to the present moment, a grand adventure that explores the American experiment in its most human and intimate aspects, a novel that asks whether America has made good on those early ...

• 

  The Black Romantic Revolution: Abolitionist Poets at the End of Slavery

  By Matt Sandler

  The Black Romantic Revolution proposes that the Black Romantics' cultural innovations have shaped Black radical culture to this day, from the blues and hip hop to Black nationalism and Black feminism.

• 

  The Gospel of Barbecue: Poems

  By Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  The title poem of this collection tells of the creation of barbecue, how slaves cooked their masters' scraps into a survival food that became a cuisine.

• 

  The Souls of Black Folk by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois Illustrated Edition

  By William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

  It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literary history. To develop this groundbreaking work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African-American in the American society.

• 

  The League of Gentlewomen Witches

  By India Holton

  . . . Miss Charlotte Pettifer belongs to a secret league of women skilled in the subtle arts. That is to say—although it must never be said—witchcraft. The League of Gentlewomen Witches strives to improve the world in small ways.

• 

  No One Is Coming to Save Us: A Novel

  By Stephanie Powell Watts

  *THE INAUGURAL SARAH JESSICA PARKER PICK FOR BOOK CLUB CENTRAL* CHOSEN AS A 2017 BEST SUMMER READ PICK BY The Wall Street Journal • The Washington Post • The Seattle Times NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2017 BY Entertainment ...

• 

  John Brown

  By William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

  First published in 1909, W.E.B. Du Bois's biography of abolitionist John Brown is a literary and historical classic. With a rare combination of scholarship and passion, Du Bois defends Brown...

• 

  Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow

  By Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

  The abolition of slavery after the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked 'a new birth of ...

• 

  The Chaneysville Incident: A Novel

  By David Bradley

  This extraordinary novel, a finalist for the National Book Award, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “perhaps the most significant work by a new black male author since James Baldwin dazzled in the early ’60s with his fine fury ...