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

Sexual assault is a thread that runs through both the historical and contemporary timelines of the novel. What changes about the way that society treats sexual assault from the “Song” sections to Ailey’s lifetime? What remains the same?

In Ailey’s timeline, the reader spends time with Ailey’s, Belle’s, and Lydia’s perspectives. If you could pick one more character whose perspective you would want to spend time with for a series of chapters, who would you pick and why?

Both Nana Claire and Uncle Root recount memories of times that they met prominent Black artists and intellectuals like Du Bois, Jessie Fauset, and Zora Neale Hurston. Jeffers could have had her characters merely be fans of these people rather than actually meeting them. What do you think is gained, if anything, by Jeffers’s decision to intertwine her fictional characters’ lives with real historical figures’ lives?

Ailey holds Coco and Geoff partly responsible for Lydia’s fate because they know about Lydia’s addiction and do nothing to help her after she moves into Zulu’s apartment building. Do you agree with Ailey’s assessment of this situation, or do you think her judgement is misguided?

What are some of the benefits that Ailey, Belle, and Lydia get from attending an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges & Universities), and what are some of the difficulties they face there? How would you characterize Jeffers’s representation of HBCUs overall?

In the “Song” sections, Micco chooses to pass as a white man among his neighbors whenever possible despite the fact that he has both Creek and African ancestry. What other characters get to make choices about how they will represent their race to the world, whether temporarily or long-term? What do the examples of characters who pass in this way communicate about the nature of racial designations?

Select one or two of the W.E.B. Du Bois-authored interludes between the parts. For each chosen interlude, discuss how it relates to the part that follows. Why do you think Jeffers chose that passage to precede that part?

In a class debate at Routledge, Ailey takes the position that Black women should participate in feminism, while some of her peers maintain that the feminist movement does not care about or want Black women in its ranks. By the end of the novel, do you think Ailey would stick with, modify, or completely disown her earlier stance on this issue? Explain your answer.