The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Review by Jess Moody

‘I thought of what Mama liked to say: to find this kind of love, you have to enter deep country’.

The idea of the ‘great American Novel’ is a troubled one. The concept and canon have faced critiques of its inherent whiteness and masculinity, how it positions marginalised peoples in a singular American story. Even were those to be disrupted, some argue the idea that one work could ever encapsulate the ‘character’ of the USA is false: the idea is more about inspiration – a constant striving of craft and voice.

But sometimes, when you see Greatness you know it. The award-winning poet, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, has published her debut novel, and it is magnificent. A multi-generational 800 page epic of strong singing prose, The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois is a story of women, family, memory, with an unflinching look at colonial, racial and sexual violence. Most importantly, there is great care here in these histories –- they are treated with love and recognition for the cumulative nature of harm.

Place is the centre of the story. Jeffers takes one family rooted in the fictional town of Chicasetta in Georgia, tracing lineage from the original Creek inhabitants, to theft by Europeans, enslavement and expulsion, Civil War, Jim Crow Laws, the civil rights movement, and up to the twenty-first century of reclaiming denied histories. The historic chapters are told in a knowing third person: opening with a teasing warning for the reader who might object to a self-claimed tale of women’s history beginning with the introduction of a small boy (‘Wait. We know you have questions…’). It is clear from the start that this tale is being told on its own terms.

Alternating with the more historical passages is the first-person story of Ailey Pearl Garfield, born 1973: the kind of protagonist who grips the reader with the strength of both her voice and vulnerabilities. Whether arguing somewhat brattishly with her parents, living with entrenched colourism, or navigating the harms of men, Ailey’s choices as a young African-American woman are placed in the wider context of what all the women in her family have faced before (her own mother’s history notes ‘she wasn’t above saving herself’).

Ailey wrestles with her personal identity, as well as deeper explorations of her family’s Indigenous, African American, and White ancestry. There’s an intellectual anchor in discussions with her Great-Great Uncle ‘Root’, full of his anecdotes and recommended readings about W.E.B. Du Bois. The reader joins in: the chapters of the book are all prefaced with quotations from Du Bois’ writings, from explorations of double-consciousness, education, and to the thorny questions of what and who will lead the fight for racial justice. Much of Ailey’s struggle takes place in and around academia, and Jeffers is both reverent of the power of education, as well as critical of its continuing discriminations and hypocrisies. Ailey is quick to challenge male intellectualism which denies the women their dues in their histories of resistance; she wants to make explicit what has too often been shrugged off as ‘implicit’.

Ailey is a bridge to other powerful ways of sharing knowledge: through family and place, the wisdom of elders, and the warnings of women. How to be, to whom and when. Reputations and recriminations. Safety and satisfaction in sex. Grief and respect. All guidance offered over long-distance phone calls, dorm rooms and office hours, kitchens and decks. But at the heart of it all, is Ailey’s continual call back to land, place and matriarchy. Jeffers evokes the sights and smells of the family’s ancestral home with a poet’s ease of rhythm and flow (‘..in Georgia, Spring shoved winter out of the way. It’s my time now, Spring insisted’). Dialogue and dialect immerses us in geography, community, and words of both triumph and injury. Sometimes Ailey pays heed to lessons before her; sometimes not. Some things she has never been prepared for.

There are many horrors in this book: many reasons why Jeffers opens with Du Bois’ writing on ‘Sorrow Songs’ of the deep South. Loss of land and innocence is not only a psychological and spiritual harm, but shown in all its harsh physical reality. There is also laugher and teasing, protection and desire, poetry and community.

Through Ailey and through the actions of other survivors, the book witnesses but makes no judgements on if and how healing is possible. Ailey herself grapples with the consequences of immersion in violent histories, particularly as a Black woman undertaking that labour in a majority-White space. Her hopes for the recovery of a missing sister are complicated by shared trauma, and parental silences. Ultimately Ailey’s own scholarly work and family testimonies will reveal the extreme sacrifices some women made for survival.

Ultimately, the love of mothers, grandmothers, and sisters is the constant thread in this non-linear narrative. Generations of women navigate the tensions between family need and individual agency: Jeffers explores these tensions with warmth, honesty and complexity. Through secrets and revelations, visions and visitations, sharp dialogue and heavy silences, this novel asks many questions which deserve time, attention and celebration.

‘“…you don’t have to tell the truth if you don’t want to. But it’s important to know what truth is, even if you only say it to yourself.”’

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is published by Harper Collins, 20th January 2022