![]() The earliest traces of Ailey’s family begin there, already a combination of tribes: Creek, Wolof, Scottish. The land that would become the town of Chicasetta was part of the territory of the Creek tribe, the site of an ancient and sacred mound built by their ancestors. ![]() Those stories begin in Georgia when it was still a British colony. To do that, she not only tells Ailey’s story but sweeps back into the past to tell stories of her ancestors in chapters called “Song.” Just as Du Bois did in the dozens of books he published in his very long and eventful life, Jeffers tackles the endlessly complex topic of race in America. It’s just one of many connections to Du Bois in the novel. Du Bois called the “Talented Tenth” of Black Americans, shaped and educated to be leaders in their communities. A century ago, they would have been among what scholar and activist W.E.B. Geoff, Ailey’s father, is a doctor, mother Belle a schoolteacher, and she and her two older sisters, Lydia and Coco, are expected to be equally ambitious. The core of the novel is narrated by Ailey Pearl Garfield, born in 1973 and raised in a northern metropolis called only “the City” and in her mother’s hometown, the tiny fictional hamlet of Chicasetta, somewhere south of Atlanta. ![]()
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