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

My only criticism is the fact that Coco didn't get a backstory the way that Ailey, Lydia and multiple family members/ancestors in their lineage had. It would have been interesting to hear a perspective from a lesbian Black woman in the South and how she came to terms with her identity, in the midst of the stories that were interwoven. OTHERWISE. This book is up there like Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing. A spectacular saga, an emotional ride, a book I'll always cherish. Truly brilliant.

I have never read a book like this before. It's going to take me a while to digest it, but I appreciated the telling of real history through a fictional family.

Writing 5 out of 5 and amazing. It saved the book.

The book could have been shorter and not lost anything or been diminished in quality.

The ending needed a tighter tie up.

A sprawling, lyrical tome of love, loss, and lives tangled in both history and heresy.

Amazing. Detailed. Beautiful. So sad. Funny. Real. It's all the things. Listening to it is definitely a good way to go. That was outstanding, too. However, I did have to make myself keep reading at many points. After the third or fourth sexual assault scene, I dropped the Audible and went to the book version so that I could have more control and skim through that. The length of this epic is also a bit overwhelming.