![]() ![]() I’ve never read a novel this size that quickly. Du Bois was a novel that I didn’t know had hold of my heart until I realised I couldn’t stop thinking about it, till I was telling people who I work with (who don’t read) all about it, till I couldn’t put it down. From the very first pages of the book you just know you’re reading something special. ![]() ![]() You know, I’ve seen people call this book a masterpiece and I can only say it’s hard to disagree. In doing so, she 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. 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. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by 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 her to succeed in their stead. Ailey grows up 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. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Du Bois, once wrote about the problem of race in America, and what he called ‘double consciousness’, a sensitivity that very African American possesses in order to survive. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |