Honorée Fanonne Jeffers has achieved quite a feat. Going from poetry to a 790 page novel and making it interesting all the way through. The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is a Book with a capital B.
Jeffers is adept at pulling the tangled strings of personal history of individual members of an extended family tighter and tighter until the point where each step becomes a boom throughout the genealogy.
Our lead is Ailey, the youngest daughter. But all the characters get a moment in the sun, hence the length of the book. She is fierce and smart in equal measure but she like most of the characters has lived with weight saddled on them and then they add more with their life choices.
This book has garnered all sorts of accolades but I wish that there was less tripping of one’s self going on. Early pregnancy and drugs are there but at times the book is just too much. A little nod to balance would have highlighted the rocky times in sharper focus especially considering the slavery and Native American darkness of early Georgia that flashes throughout the book. I thought, more than a few times, “don’t do that, it is not going to end well.”
I am going to go the really obvious route here. For those of us in Los Angeles, Crowns & Hops is a brewery coming to Inglewood in the next year or two. They first and foremost a quite good beer maker and second are a black run business. Get a mixed 4-pack if you haven’t had their beers before.