Honoreé Fannone Jeffers' The Love Songs of W. E. B. DuBois is a literary tour de force.
The book has a significant historic-fiction component, as the early threads of the family tree began pulling themselves together in the "place between the tall trees" -- the place that would come to be called Chicasetta in the state that would come to be called Georgia. Land stolen from the Creek Nation by treaty, and then by force, and worked by Black slaves brought from across the Atlantic and, when that trade was banned, from other slave states, or brought back (escapees or otherwise) from the Northern states.
And these disparate threads would culminate in the three children of Maybelle Lee as laid out by the author in the very early phases of the book. But it was information provided too early to be anything but confusing; so we moved along.
But this book is more than historical fiction. The second thread contained within the covers is a coming-of-age/coming-to-grips/fictional memoir/self-realization/finding-her-roots story centered around Ailey, the final addition to the family tree and the youngest of three daughters of a "light-skinned" black doctor and his "darker-skinned", stay-at-home wife. This family lived in an urban setting but, given their roots, the mother and daughters returned to Chicasetta annually for summer holidays. This thread revolves around family secrets, childhood sexual abuse, "it takes a village" to raise a black child, meeting family expectations, finding something you actually love doing, and genealogical detective work.
There is a third thread here which, even though encapsulated in the Ailey story, sticks out for me, having, as it does, a cultural anthropology bent. It is the story of education and scholarship in forward-leaning black households/communities. It began early in this book with the discussion of school choices for Ailey in her Elementary and High School years and continued into her choice of college. And the pressure here was applied by parents and relatives who saw Ailey as being Doctor material and, in order to realize their goal, she had to attend certain schools. The anthropological nature of this space is further highlighted by the author's coverage of black college culture (with the sororities and the fraternities). The thread continues through to the academic side once Ailey becomes a researcher and begins her interaction with folks on that side of the college coin.
This is a multi-faceted effort, to say the least. The lift becomes heavier in that the material is not presented in a continuous fashion. Rather, the multiple threads of the historic fiction is interspersed with multiple threads of the Ailey stories at random times and in randomly sized chunks.
Further complexing the initiative is the author's "pass the mic" approach to perspective. It is brilliant in that it fleshes out the stories fully and reveals the wizardry of the author in that she dons the mantle and convincingly tells the stories of different races, ethnicities, and age groups in different temporal intervals. Even trickier, she tells some stories of the same person at different stages in their development. In that the reader becomes accustomed to this construct, the book suffers when it is not utilized. For example, the historical family members who went off to Boston lost their voices, with their stories eventually excavated by Ailey and clarified by her Uncle (Root). But it did not have the same vibrancy and depth. In wine terms, it was not persistent.
This is an ambitious, female-centered, narrative from a story teller who is comfortable spinning complex yarns. But I am even more impressed by the breadth and depth of her research and her ability to exploit same to build robust literary structures within which her characters are seamlessly deployed. The author delves into topics as far afield as black incorporation into indigenous tribes (a topic with some currency), slavery in the south, the slave trade (both across the Atlantic and intra-US, the abuse of slave bodies by master and overseer alike, the dehumanizing sexual trauma experienced by black female slaves and the resulting further male emasculation, sharecropping, and more currently, country life, colorism, life for young black college students, and black scholarship. And the author does not just place the characters into historical settings; rather, she weaves them into the fabric of their times.
This is the initial fiction effort by the accomplished poet and essayist Honoreé Fannone Jeffers and it is immense in scope and size; 797 pages to be exact. In her NPR interview, Ms. Jeffers indicated that she had the book sold at 400 pages but took another almost 400 pages and 2+ years to complete the effort. This book is worth your time. Pay special attention to the Acknowledgments and Archival Coda at the back of the book -- they are informative in their own right as to the genesis and research directions pursued. Take notes as you read book, especially when new characters are introduced. It will prove helpful, especially if you have to lay the book aside for a while.
©EverythingElse238
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