Skip to product information
1 of 1

Kenola's Bookbag

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois: An Oprah's Book Club Novel Hardcover – by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois: An Oprah's Book Club Novel Hardcover – by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Regular price $28.99 USD
Regular price Sale price $28.99 USD
Sale Sold out

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 Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s 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 mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.

To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in 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 story—and the song—of America itself.

View full details
  • Subscription boxes ship:

    January

    March

    May

    July

    September

    November

Black woman wearing osoasabrand sweatshirt and holding a Kenola's Bookbag  fun subscription box.

Bringing Our Focus Black

Black woman reading a book and drinking coffee.

"I got my box and I love all the stuff I got!!! The personalized note was a nice touch.  Love the packaging." - Melissa Almontero

Black woman holding a Kenola's Bookbag best subscription box on a bed with a vase of flowers next to her.

A gift with each box

"I loved my box!  I had never subscribed to a book subscription box before.  The goodies were all so good and I am almost done with the book already.  It was like getting a Christmas gift in September."- JA