The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois

DEBUT Ailey, the central character of this multigenerational saga from Jeffers (a National Book Award finalist in 2020 for her poetry collection The Age of Phillis), is the youngest daughter of an upwardly mobile Black family. Though they live in a Northern city, the family has roots in rural Georgia, where Ailey, her mother, and sometimes her siblings spend the summers. The account of Ailey’s coming-of-age and self-actualization is interspersed with interludes called “songs” that tell the complex family history, beginning with Ailey’s indigenous Creek ancestors, the colonization of the land by white settlers, and the legacy of slavery. We also take detours focusing on Ailey’s mother, Belle, and her oldest sister, Lydia. Over the centuries, members of the family, with African, Creek, and white ancestry, experience generational trauma resulting from slavery and sexual abuse; they are occasionally visited at crucial times by dreams or visions of ancestors. The book’s length and scope might feel daunting, but Ailey is an appealing protagonist, and the patient reader will be rewarded. Jeffers has created an extensive world and a cast of memorable characters, not the least of whom is Ailey’s great-great-uncle Root, a retired professor and Du Bois devotee.