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

ISBN-13: 9780062942937 / Angielski / Twarda / 2021 / 816 str.

Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Opis

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 Boiss words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americansthe revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmersAiley carries Du Boiss 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 mothers family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging thats made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of womenher mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuriesthat urge Ailey to succeed in their stead. To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her familys past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestorsIndigenous, Black, and whitein 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 storyand the songof America itself.

AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB SELECTION "Epic. I was just enraptured by the lineage and the story of this modern African-American family. A combination of historical and modern storyIve never read anything quite like it.

It just consumed me."Oprah Winfrey, Oprah Book Club Pick Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize 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 Time 11 Best Books of the Month A Washington Post 10 Books of the Month A CNN Best Book of the Month A Ms. Most Anticipated Book of the Year A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of the Year A Book Page 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 Winnerof an AudioFile Earphones Award The 2020 National Book Awardnominated poet makes her fiction debut with this magisterial epican intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancerthat chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era.