Winfrey picks ‘Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois’ for book club

By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — One of the year’s most anticipated debut novels is now an Oprah Winfrey book club pick. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois” weaves centuries of Black history through a family in the American South and its contemporary narrator, young Ailey Paul Garfield. The 54-year-old Jeffers is already an acclaimed poet whose “The Age of Phillis” was on the long list in 2020 for a National Book Award. She is a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma and has championed the stories and achievements of Black women.