Poured Over: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers on The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

“I’m always coming back to Chicasetta, in the same way that Ernest Gaines always comes back to Bayonne parish. And William Faulkner always comes back to that county that I cannot pronounce, your top or whatever it is, right. You know, in the same way that Louise Erdrich returns to the particular reservation, I’m always coming back to these characters.” A finalist for the National Book Award, poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers has conjured an epic and indelible story of an American family with her debut novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois. Beautifully written, it’s a book we never wanted to end (and you won’t either). Honorée joins us on the show to talk about love and home and family, the legacy of slavery, colorism, feminism, writing about Black joy, Lucille Clifton, and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer.

Featured Book:

The Long Songs of W.E.B Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays), here and on your favorite podcast app.

Full transcript for this episode of Poured Over:

B&N: I’m Miwa Messer, I am the producer and host of Poured Over and I am so so excited to have Honoree Fanonne Jeffers in the studio with us today, I did not want The Love Songs of WEB DuBois to end. It’s an 800 page book and I did not want it to end and unright you have described your debut novel, albeit sixth book, but debut novel, as a kitchen table epic. Can we just talk about how the book started for you, because there are some people who are like, Oh, it took her 10 years to write it. But in fact, this is the culmination of a lot of work over many, many more years than that.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers: 30 years. I’ve been in the archives for over 30 years. So I first started being in the archives when I was failing as a graduate student at UNC Chapel Hill in journalism, that second semester when I knew I wasn’t coming back, but I still needed to get my loans. I took a an African American Studies graduate seminar with Dr. JOSEPH HARRIS of Howard University. And he sent us into the archives at the southern historical collection, which really informs a lot of, you know, my knowledge of a Southern University, these renowned archives, you know, all of that. I’ve been using archival work in my poetry and now my fiction, ever since the beginning. That’s how we got started. But in terms of how this is the culmination of my work, I think that I’ve always been interested even from the time that I was a little girl, of early black people. I first read Frederick Douglass’s first slave narrative, what Dr. Henry Louis Gates would call the classic slave narratives. And I read him when I guess it was about 11 or 12. And the same with Harry Jacobs incidents in life of a slave girl. Although I’m dating myself, I’m in my 50s, we knew her as Linda Brandt, she had an alias Harriet Jacobs, was known as Linda Brandt then, and it wasn’t until another historian did the research that we found out exactly who that lady was, and all of that, and no spoilers. But that sort of issue with identity of 19th century narratives, in forms, something that I won’t say about the book. So one of the things that I learned as I was having been in the archives for 30 years, sort of how to mimic a particular voice, even though the songs are not an oral history, told by people, they’re told by this sort of indigenous chorus of the land, the sort of language that you see the difference in the language of the songs versus sort of irreverent, very contemporary, sometimes even, I guess, hip hop infused voice of Ailey, I wanted there to be a very different tone, even though I’m a poet, so you’re going to see that sort of lyricism or whatever. So I first learned that from the classic slave narratives that sort of, you know, we do not speak about particular things, you know, of the body of the bed room of all of that very directly, we sort of have these euphemisms, or I learned all of that in the archives, and from reading 19th century African American autobiography.

B&N: I want to come back to the title for a second before we get really deep into this conversation, because it’s love songs, plural. Yeah. And part of that is a reference to Dubois himself. And this idea of double consciousness, which I find really fascinating. And I’m gonna quote, Dubois himself for a second, it’s a particular sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

HFJ: Well, I’ve thought about this because there have been plenty people in you know, you don’t want to fight the critics. So there’s been plenty people who have talked about double consciousness, racial double consciousness. That’s not the kind of double consciousness that I’m talking about. Really, this novel is very much an afro indigenous space and African American space and African in spades, my characters only really think about white people when they come to do harm, because I wanted my black readers to see the unabashed shit, celebratory and sometimes ugly side of blackness, you know, like flies on the wall. But I also wanted non black people to be able to see this. But I think if we do think about double consciousness, what I’m thinking about is all kinds of women, although all of the women in this particular book are cisgender, but all kinds of women, trans women, and particularly women of color, we are always concerned about respectability, even when we go against it. We’re still like, how are these people looking at me, am I being a lady and my representing my race to the fullest all of these sorts of things. And that’s the thing with Ailey she’s growing up in this black bourgeoisie enclave, even though her mother’s people are country and working class. And she’s very concerned about how she represents the family, particularly when one family member is having all sorts of problems, and so much rests on her shoulders. And so that’s the sort of double consciousness that I really have been very gratified by the response of women of color, BIPOC women about how they see Ailey and they say, Yeah, I recognize that I recognize that when I’m out and about, and even when we go against it, even when I go against it. I’m always aware that I’m going against it. It’s never a natural. I’m just myself.

B&N: It’s really hard for a lot of people in this book to let go of the idea of the good girl, and that includes women. That includes women, athletes, even fighting especially when she gets to college, and they’re nice boys. And then there’s that Abdul which…

HFJ: Oh my God, he is so horrible isn’t he?

B&N: That dude, but Ailey here she is. She’s class of 95. At historically black college. And that her family, she’s a legacy student. She doesn’t want to tell people she’s a legacy.

HFJ: She don’t want to tell anybody. She’s a legacy student like her second grade uncle. Some people say her great uncle, but this is her mother’s great uncle, right. He is a renowned professor. And she doesn’t want to tell anybody. And she’s trying to fight this whole politics of respectability. That’s a term that was coined by the great African American scholar Evelyn Higginbotham and, you know, talking about how black women had to perform the cult of domesticity, which really always excludes BIPOC women, right? The cult of domesticity was never for poor white women. It was never for Indigenous women. It was never for black women or any other women of color. But there’s this way that black middle class people have emulated middle and upper middle class white people as this way of furthering the race. And that worked. But then it didn’t. I mean, it worked in terms of you know, we have the Negro club women’s movement. We have these black colleges. I’m a graduate of Talladega college. You know, my two sisters were graduates of Spelman. My mother is a graduate of Spelman. My niece is a graduate of Talladega. Right? So we have these black women who are sort of moved forward. But there’s always this sort of cage, you know, it’s like a like I always say, you know, Epsons Negro doll house, right? There’s always this sort of cage that black women are in. It’s a lot to navigate in real life and for Ailey and her sisters.

B&N: And Ailey’s mom is sort of the perfect example of what you just described as Ibsen’s black women’s dollhouse. And Belle clearly loves her children. She clearly loves her husband, she clearly loves her extended family. She loves everything about her life. But the reality is, too that she has expectations of her daughters that again, come back to this who’s a good girl who’s not who’s successful. Who’s not. It’s all about this respectability, but it is I have to have a little bit of empathy for her because she is worried about keeping her daughter’s safe. Yes, getting through life in the world because she knows how cruel the wider white world can be. And part of me says, and she makes a couple of choices in this book where you’re at Just like…

HFJ: What’s going on girl.

B&N: Also one of her sister in laws, her husband, Jeff, his brother, Lawrence has married a white woman called Diane, right. And there’s a point in the book where Diane comes out and says, Oh, you’ve got to leave, this is ridiculous, you’ve got it. And Belle just looks at her and says, Hey, wait a minute, you’re white, you don’t understand what’s going to happen, social services is going to come and it’s going to see, and question my ability to parent my children on my own. The scene is taking place and what sort of stuff it’s taking…

HFJ: It’s takin place in the late 60s, during the rise of the Black Power movement. And one of the things that when I was writing particular scenes, I wasn’t thinking, Okay, this is supposed to mean this, or this is supposed to mean this. But I think after you finish a book, you go back, and it just kind of surprises you some of the choices that you make that do resonate. For example, we now know, and I didn’t know that when I was writing that scene, that black women are the number one moms that social services will get called on Child Protective Services at the drop of a hat will get called on black women, their children will get taken from them. And I do remember hearing conversations, you know, I would go down south as a little girl, and my grandmother would be like, well, you know, she on the way off. And now, you know, she on the welfare now, because you know, her husband, he over there across town with that other girl, you know, so when the welfare was, at best, people felt sympathetic, but at worse, it said something about those women that you couldn’t keep your family together, you couldn’t keep your man, then you had to move into section eight housing, or the projects. And there was just all of that, and you’re supposed to be moving the race forward. And you’re on the welfare and taking public assistance and all of that there was a lot of judgment about women who many of them were making these choices, because their husbands had died. Right? So it wasn’t even a choice. It was like if you want to feed your family, their husbands to die, or their husbands were beating them, or their husbands were emotionally abusing them by cheating on them or whatever. I just remember growing up with this fear of ever being an out of wedlock mother, even as I do not judge other women who have done that. But for me out of wedlock. I mean, my family who you know, right? You know, I remember a cousin of mine had a child out of wedlock and people were in the community. Were coming to my auntie, my grandmother’s sister and saying she had this baby. And this, this, that and the other and you know, she had to be sharing. I can’t say the exact thing that my great aunt said. But she said, That’s my daughter’s insert expletive. That’s nobody’s business, but hers. And I remember thinking about this many, many times when I got into graduate school, and I thought that was such a feminist statement. Right? You know, that was such an affirming feminist statement in the early 70s. But that was extraordinary for that country black community that I grew up in.

B&N: And Belle, she really is. She’s got a lot happening that I think some folks outside of the black community might not quite understand I mean, she’s darker skin than her husband. Yes. This is kind of bring us to Nana Claire in a second. Yes. I’m holding off Nana Claire for as long as I can because I know every family has a Nana Claire, but every family here we gotta talk and we’re and we’re gonna talk about the classism that comes with Nana and the colorism that comes in then. But Bell also when she wants to be part of the movement and the revolution, and she’s standing next to her husband at these community meetings and whatnot. That’s when she’s asked to bring macaroni and cheese to feed.

HFJ: That’s when she’s asked to bring macaroni and cheese and to fry chicken and to make sweet potato pie, and guess what she does it she does it and also I remember that as a little girl, right? I remember seeing that. So people made these assumptions. Oh, this is your family story and it’s not but what I do present are situations that so many black women I know who grew up at a particular way I call us red, black and green diaper babies, right? We grew up in the Black Power movement. My father was a very well known Black Arts Movement poet, we all remember this, like, I remember Lucille Clifton, who was my mentor, my second mother, my friend, and she would talk about how when there would be like these parties of artists, you know, doing that Black Arts Movement time, and they would bring their children and dump them on her at the party and say, Lucille has a whole bunch of children, she loves children. This is not a private story, she actually, you know, would talk about that at readings. And so that is this sort of thing, right? Even in the middle of a liberation struggle, there is still this way that black women were kept down and told feminism is for white when our struggle is let’s get the black man forward, and then he will bring you along. And I’m still waiting on that. I mean, even though I have many dear black male friends who are really trying to be feminist and womanist, but I still see a lot, and I won’t be messing and go into it, but I see a lot of it. That’s what Belle is experiencing. And I think it’s really interesting because Belle does come from a matrilineal family not matriarchal, because there’s actually no such thing as a matriarchy. You know, people keep trying to say that, but she comes from this family of very strong women, even as they are outwardly bowing to patriarchy. But like, there’s this story about her mother, Miss Rose, saying that her daddy brings his paycheck to her every week. And then out of that, because this is the 60. So, you know, this was a lot of money she gives him $10. Not a lot, but it’s more than what $10 would be, you know, she gives him $10, you know, and this will pay for his gas and the beers that he likes to drink with his friends and the peanut butter bars that he likes to eat. And then she says, and if he can chase women with whatever is leftover, God bless him. And I remember when I was growing up, that is what a good marriage was that the man would bring all of his money and give it to his wife. And then she would give him an allowance. And that I realized only as a grown woman was not simply about running the house, or as they say, in Senegal, the de ponce, you know the de ponce the household money that wasn’t just about running the household. That meant she could trust him. He went spin his money or other women. So I wanted also to show these sorts of complications of gender politics and all of that, you know, happening, but at the same time, I wasn’t thinking about it. I was just thinking this is the community.

B&N: And here comes Nana Claire. And Belle was fully unprepared. Nana Claire’s her mother in law, who grew up with a certain amount of privilege to there. She’s from a family where there are five generations of doctors including her son, and the sixth generation is going to include at least one of her granddaughters but she thinks Aly should be one of them as well. And at least like I don’t really want to do this but Nana Claire’s during the whole I’ll pay for your education. But you have to do what I say and Nana Claire also finds it very important that she passes. She doesn’t do it every day. She has moments where she chooses to pass but wow, did she hold it against her daughter in law bell that Belle is darker and Ailey is darker.
HFJ: Ailey is darker. I never want it to be exactly clear on what color Ailey was right because when you go different places in black communities like in the deep south and Mississippi and Alabama people have actually called me light skinned which I think is really funny, right because I’m very brand I actually think it’s because I have curly hair but that’s a whole nother story. But then when you go to Louisiana where they have the Creoles, I’m very dark and so it really is about where you are and that was also a Herstonian and gesture because I remember what Janie it was the same way like she describes herself in a photograph as a real dark little girl with long hair but then other people look at her as fair skinned and so it also depends on what community you are. But Nana is upset you know Nana was blonde. Before she turned silver. She She has light eyes, her husband is very light skinned. So the two of them are descended from Creoles, from Louisiana reoles. Nana, Claire is very much of the politics of respectability, that you have to emulate white people. And one of the ways you do this is that you have to marry a mate that’s lighter than you so you can push the family forward. And when she says women push the family forward, what she’s saying is, women need to give birth to lighter skinned children, because that is what privilege is about. And I’m seeing that now, you know, there are a lot of African Americans in America who sort of, they have this romance with West Africa. And I have this sort of love for people that I meet. But I also know that West Africa has its own problems. And one of the things that I found really troubling, but interesting is this whole thing about bleaching creams, and like no shame about the bleaching right when I was coming up, if people use like bleaching cream, they would like hide it, because that was supposed to be shameful. But, you know, I watched this Senegalese soap opera, and they have this woman who turns from very deep brown, which is my color, I consider myself dark skinned, and then all of a sudden, they lighten her skin as she rubs the lotion on, right? You know, and this is part of class, right? Anytime you have colonialism, or you have white supremacy, what you have is the closer that you are in shade to the master, then the more privilege you have. And so that is also what I wanted to do to talk about in the songs. But everything in this book is complicated. There’s been this attitude about House Negroes versus field negros and the house Negros have it so much better. But there have been plenty of historians who talk about if you were enslaved, and you were female, and sometimes male, and I’m using these cisgender labels coz although we’ve always had non binary and transgender people, we didn’t always have the vocabulary for it, right? And so if you’re in the house, okay, you might be live scan, and you might get more biscuits, or you might have meat at every meal, or whatever. But there are also people men, stalking the hallways at night. And so you have to be really frightened of being in the house. Very few people have spoken overtly about that, you know, it’s been implied, but I wanted to really look at that overtly. What is the cost of when you see this black bourgeoisie group of people, and they’re mostly light skinned, or we say hi Brown, that means not a deep brown, right? They’re mostly light skinned, they have hair particular texture, they have more money, or they live, you know, in nicer homes, or whatever. What was the cost for their cisgender female ancestors to get and the cost was intimate assault. That was the cost that these women’s bodies were violated. And I think that because they are women, very few people, outside of historians and early American scholars have really cared. What’s the big deal. It’s only sexual harassment, or it’s only intimate assault. What is the big deal? And the big deal is this trauma is carried forward.

B&N: And that’s really why I wanted to sort of bring Ellie and Belle and Claire to the forefront. There’s a very large cast of I mean, this is 200 years of this community. Yes, start in a creek village before we’re even in Georgia. And this becomes Georgia and the family farm ends up being on the site of a plantation and we see the trajectory of the land, we see the trajectory of the families and the consequences of the rape of women and girls, frankly, we see how the community moves forward. We see how people leave the community but for instance, you’ve got uncle route, this wonderful scholar, he also passes but he doesn’t see his world the way Nana Claire sees hers. And I’m wondering how much of that as a result of Route being man, but route also having stayed in the south he also very ahead of his time took his wife’s last name, which I have to think would have been scandalous in his case.

HFJ: It would have been very scandalous.

B&N: He explains why but even now, people are a little shocked if a dude takes his wife’s name. And I’m like, well,

HFJ: What’s the big deal? I think, yes, some of it has to do with the fact that he’s a man, and that he can do whatever he wants to. But I also think that and of course, I’m biased. There’s a literal, but also figurative warmth. In the south, we feel freedom if we don’t have freedom, even in the midst of this horrific, you know, lynchings and all of that. But you will see people down south who have lived maybe not on the same piece of land, but within a five to 10 mile radius of their ancestors going all the way back to as far as they can remember, my people are from Eton tin and Milledgeville, Georgia, my mother’s people. And my mother’s great grandmother, who was born enslaved was in Milledgeville. We’re talking about at least 18, when she was born in the 1850s, I think that there’s this thing that Root doesn’t want to leave, because he doesn’t want to give a community and one of the things that I was very overt about, you know, everything is not over is I wanted to say through ru, we love our community, there’s this attitude that black people really, in order to be happy, we have to go into all white spaces. And that’s what true happiness is. I remember I was at a conference, the creative writing conference, associated writing programs conference, this was about, I guess, 20 years ago, and I was sitting at a table with this white man, and this was before, you know, as a poet, friend of mine said this before I made my bounds. So I had my one little book, you know, my first book of poetry. And so you know, I’m scared a lot at that time. I’m very scared about challenging white people. And I think that’s always so shocking to people now, because I just seem to be so strong, but I’m also in my 50s. But I was in my very early 30s, then this was I think, 2001. And I mentioned that I had graduated from a historically black college. And he said, What does that mean? And I said, Well, it was, you know, so I go into my spiel, because you learn all of the stuff, right? I said, well Talladega college was founded in 1867, you know, to educate, freed, we said slaves, then we didn’t say enslaved people. That’s a recent. And he said, so there aren’t any white students. And I said, you know, we’ve always been equal opportunity, from the moment that all HBCUs have been founded. All are welcome here. Right, as Dean Walters says to Ailey, all are welcome here. And as a matter of fact, like Hampton University think they actually had a scholarship for Native American students, right? And then he just keeps pushing, and he says, so no white people. And I said, Now, he said, How could you go to a school like that? And there was an Irish guy from Ireland, sitting at the table, and he said, Jesus Christ, you know, when he said that, right? It was like, What are you saying? He said, Man, she’s black. You know, and, and I thought, wow, but that’s the attitude, right? How would I be happy around all black people? But then I said to him, I said, Well, how would you feel if every day your life, you had to leave what you knew, and come into the midst of all black people, and he just started laughing, like that was just incomprehensible to him. And so I think when we think about root, what I wanted to show people is that black people who want to live among other black people who want to marry other black people, there’s a reason that Ailey never has a white boyfriend. She’s not attracted to white men. So black people who only want to marry other black people are only ever you know, but I don’t care. You know, my thing is whatever somebody wants to marry if you like it, I love it. I’ve dated you know, white men before, right? But I want it to really show like there are people who exist like this and this is a choice. This is not that they are compelled to do this or that they are forced to do this. They love their community. Because the one thing about when I was at talladega, and I’ve always been socially awkward, and I’ve always had social anxiety. I connect with people always sort of shocked by that. When I was at talladega, one of the things that always amazed me as I looked back was, I never had to worry about someone not liking me, because I was bland. I was socially awkward, I would just say whatever we you know, now, I’ve learned some grace. But I was very rough hearing, you know, back in college, in graduate school, and my 30s, right, I was very rough few. And I just say exactly what was on my mind. I wasn’t like popular or cheerleader type or anything like that. But I never ever thought, hey, somebody’s acting this way towards me, because they don’t like black people. And I didn’t understand how miraculous that was, until I left that world, and integrated someplace else.

B&N: And part of why bring up Root, beyond the fact that I love this guy.

HFJ: Everybody loves Uncle Root.

B&N: But he’s part of how Ailey finds her path. And she is key to bringing the two storylines together. Like I said, I know we spent a lot of time on sort of the present day and whatnot. But a big piece of the book is following this family as they become Yes, Belle and Ailey and even Nana Claire. These two very distinct storylines come together, because you have all of America in this novel in 200 years, and you cover so much emotional territory and physical territory, and you are looking very sharply at our culture in our community and our country. But you bring together these two storylines in a really incredible way. And we are not going to talk about the third part of this book, because it will give away too much. But it is such a satisfying combination. It was such a delight to me as a reader, do you miss these characters? I mean, you’re not living with them every day anymore. And you’re coming finally to the end of book tour two years later.
HFJ: I do miss them. But what I will say is, I’m always coming back to Chicasetta, in the same way that Ernest Gaines always comes back to beyond perish. And William Faulkner always comes back to that county that I cannot pronounce your top or whatever it is, right. You know, in the same way that Louise Erdrich returns to the particular reservation, I’m always coming back to these characters. And there’s actually a novel because well, it really wasn’t even about the fans who were complaining were, you know, cocao, it was about I always had planned a cocoa novel, because I felt like I would give her short shrift. If I was trying to explore all these things. I also because there is childhood abuse, and Coco is a lesbian, Ailey’s sister is a lesbian, I did not in any way want to imply that that childhood abuse had led to Coco being lesbian. So I knew that I had to find a different way. And so that novel is coming. But before that, there will be short stories that explore some of the minor characters and a novella in the short stories. And that’s actually due in 2020. For that, I have to turn that in. And so yeah, I will always come back because I feel like every time I come back to Chicasetta I learned something.

B&N: It sounds like we’re getting a little bit into Deeshaw Philyaw Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Stephanie Powell Watts territory, two of my favorite favorite writers. So I’m very excited about those stories and I’m very excited for Coco’s novel. I don’t want to ask you if you have a favorite character because I think it’s hard with a cast this large although you know, la kind of is our girl. But do you have a favorite moment from Love Songs? Do you have something that just sticks with you? And you think, Oh, I created that.

HFJ: There is the moment where Ailey really comes into her own? Again, no spoilers. That scene. We’ve seen her make all of these very questionable, personal and romantic choices. I mean, I have black women in my DMs saying what? You know, I can’t stand you’re hangry but at the same time, they couldn’t let her go right and I think that moment is one of my favorites. But there is a moment where Ailey is talking to Uncle Root, you know, close to the end of the book. And he tells her his story, and he’s so vulnerable. And he clearly is trying to keep from crying. And I love that I really get choked up, I cried when I wrote it. Because to me, even as a radical feminist, or maybe because as a radical black feminist, I saw this black man struggling with his vulnerability, and I saw him exposing his own pain, ministry to Ailey’s soul. And I thought, This is what I have always hoped for, from my community, that black men and black women could speak to each other and understanding and tenderness. And that is the moment my favorite moment in the book is between, really the love song is not only for America, but this is really a love story, platonic love story between Ailey and Uncle Root.

B&N: And it is so satisfying. This book is so emotionally satisfying in so many ways, and even the difficult stuff, right? Not gonna make light of the difficult stuff. There are moments in this book that are really rough going, but there is a lot of heart. There’s a lot of joy, there’s a lot of love, even when things are difficult. And I think that’s really important for us to be able to say, it’s not all the rough stuff. It’s not no of the hard part at all. I mean, we see so many narratives, whether it’s books or films or television, where it’s just like, if you’re black or brown, the world is a horrible place no matter what. Right? One of the things I most appreciate about The Love Songs of WEB DuBois, is the fact that you’ve been able to say, hey, wait a minute, we need to change the narrative. We need to change the framework, we need to change the experience. I personally love it when Ailey is figuring out what’s going on with all of those terrible boys because you know what, sometimes you just need to make terrible choices for a minute.

HFJ: You need to make terrible choices.

B&N: But you can’t live your life for someone else. And her character is really important. But I think Belle is really important. And yeah, Nana Claire, I know she gave me a nerve there. But she’s part of the community. And we can’t just stick her in a corner and be like, Well, if we ignore her, she’ll go away. She’s not going away. She’s not like every family has a Nana Claire.

HFJ: Every family has the Nana Claire, and every family has a rebel like Ailey. Every family has the good girl like Coco. But I think at the end of the day, what I wanted people to see is that in an odd way, this book was a family reunion. It was an American family reunion. And it was a Chicasetta family reunion. And you see that no matter what black folks have gone through, we have joy, and we insist on the joy. And that’s the promise that I make my readers, if you walk through this very difficult space, you’re going to get to some joy at the end. That is what you have in black communities.

B&N: That seems like a really good place to wrap up. But is there anything else that we missed that you want to talk about before I let you go?

HFJ: This is great. My heart is so full, you see me with my tissue. I’m an unabashed crier. I have tried to stop. But this has just been such a great conversation. And I really feel so understood. Oh, I really love your book. I mean, you not only loved it, though, you got it and saw it. And I think that you always want to let people have their moment with a book you don’t want to or wrestle. You know, they’re understanding to the ground and kick the bejesus up out of it. But a lot of times, you know, you talk to people and they just, they have completely missed something. It’s clear that you really, you really got into the granular details of this book. And that is what every writer wants for a reader. So I’m just so grateful.

B&N: I’m so invested in your characters. I’m so invested in your world. I’m so invested in these characters. Thank you so much. Honore Fanonne Jeffers, thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over the love songs of W EB Dubois is out in paperback. So if you thought the hardcover was big, guess what? The paperback smaller you can put it in a pocket. Take it everywhere with you this summer. It’s brilliant. Thank you again.

HFJ: Thank you.

B&N:

HFJ:

B&N: