The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

Ailey Pearl Garfield grows up between the City in the north and summers spent in her mother's small hometown of Chicasetta, Georgia. From an early age, she finds herself in a battle for belonging that's made all the more difficult by a hurt in her past, 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 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.