The Souls of Black Folk

Essays of 'life and love and strife and failure'

These are heartfelt essays about discrimination, injustice and denial. Du Bois analyzes the problem of 'color line' and the importance of 'dwelling above the veil' of prejudice in terms of sociology, history, religion, music and psychology.
From the start, the first chapter 'Of our spiritual strivings' moved me deeply. It focuses on the stereotype of an African American as "a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,––a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,––an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."
The SoBF is a universally acknowledged literary masterpiece, a blend of poignant fiction, critique and autobiography. It creates powerful imagery that stays etched in your memory.
The book is made up of the following essays:
The Forethought
Of Our Spiritual Strivings
Of the Dawn of Freedom
Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others
Of the Meaning of Progress
Of the Wings of Atalanta
Of the Training of Black Men
Of the Black Belt
Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece
Of the Sons of Master and Man
Of the Faith of the Fathers
Of the Passing of the First-Born
Of Alexander Crummell
Of the Coming of John
The Sorrow Songs
The After-Thought
Each of the essays is introduced by a passage from poems and songs. The last section, which I found particularly insightful, interprets the message of African American folk songs.

51 of 51 people found this review helpful

Artistry!!!

I listened to this book after listening to Booker T Washington's "Up from Slavery" because I wanted to know more about these great men. My eyes were opened W.E.B. DuBois let us peek at the soul crushing ways poverty and racism change people. In addition I have discovered he was a real artist, unlike Booker T Washington a pragmatist. I loved DuBois used language in his prose. I now understand his more radical at that time attitude toward black people obtaining political and human rights because the artist soul can't be contained. I encourage readers to read both books and discover the genius of both these different men.

38 of 39 people found this review helpful

Sadly, still true.

Have you listened to any of Mirron Willis’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I liked the narrator of this book.

Any additional comments?

This was an Audible impulse buy, but I'm glad I got it. DuBois, an African-American university professor in the early 1900s, wrote this book as a response to Booker T. Washington's plan for the post-slavery black community, and as a documentation of the kind of demoralization, fragmentation, and hopelessness of black America post-Civil War.

Washington's approach was pragmatic. African-Americans should stop lobbying for political rights. (Perhaps he felt it would incite too much backlash?) They should not dream of going to college, but of attending technical schools and going into the trades. Black America will succeed by putting their heads down and working hard for economic prosperity, with healthy doses of thrift and sacrifice.

DuBois' response was that a culture needs more than bread to live on. African-Americans needed to gain the ability to think about the world they live in, to articulate their experience and what they have to offer to our country. This could only come about through liberal education, not trade school alone. DuBois points out that the teachers at Washington's trade schools were not trained at trade schools, but at black colleges. These colleges also produced needed moral, spiritual, and intellectual leaders of the black community: professors, preachers, doctors, and other professionals.

Besides, Du Bois points out, Washington's ethic of "buckle down, work hard" doesn't even work. Du Bois documents the very real economic plight of the supposedly freed men and women. Though they are legally free, they are trapped in a cycle of indebted tenant farming. The few who, through ingenuity and the luck of a few good harvests, save up the money to buy their own land, are often cheated by whites who take their money and run. This and other structural inequalities, such as poor education funding and unstable families due to the heritage of slavery, expose Washington's philosophy for the canard it is - so says Du Bois. This book has made me curious to read Washington and hear his side of the story.

Formerly, said Du Bois, the 'best' blacks (the house slaves) and the 'best' whites were intimate, living together and having bonds of quasi-family ties; now they are segregated. How then can we understand one another? What's so sad is that most of this book can still apply today. In some ways, not much has changed for African-Americans living with the legacy of slavery and subsequent political and economic disenfranchisement. As a historical work, Du Bois' book is important to read 113 years later; his bristling literary style, full of high-brow literary allusions, only adds pleasure.

47 of 50 people found this review helpful

Great Listen!

I really enjoyed the audio version. I've had the book for years and was unable to finish it but the audio version allowed me to finish in a few days. Great Listen!

10 of 10 people found this review helpful

Prejudices and Understanding

The collection of essays by W E B Du Bois shows the injustices and misunderstandings that our prejudices develop. The negro bondage and the ideas it spread in american society are explained. The way black folk react and adjust to this human inequality is the main subject of this valuable work. The chapters about the black faith and church are written in a beautiful style. The book sucedes in demonstrate that our prejudices are often the cause of our problems and miseries.

9 of 9 people found this review helpful

So relevant for today

I had heard of W.E.B Dubois but I had never read him. It amazes me how this book explains historically and sociologically why we are in such trouble today. Dubois carefully chronicles the lack of planning and consideration that happened after emancipation, allowing Jim Crow to develop, and progress to stagnate for black people, especially in the south. Dubois has a lyrical writing style that brings his world alive and connects you to him and the people he writes about. Highly recommended.

13 of 14 people found this review helpful

Magnificent book--but the actor swallows his words

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The book itself is a work of genius.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

Its originality and insight.

How could the performance have been better?

The actor swallows the ending of almost every sentence, so that the last few words are barely audible. This is terrible technique.

Was The Souls of Black Folk worth the listening time?

Yes!

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Narration is Laborious

The substantive writing style may be too cumbersome to translate into audio. I found the narration failed to get the information across clearly. It is difficult to follow at times.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

deep

There are so many randomlike stories and theories but each is deep. There's history connections in the stories also.

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

15 wide ranging essays

As far as I can remember I have not read a full book by WEB DuBois previously, although I know I have read a couple of essays. He is a fascinating character. He was born during reconstruction and earned a PhD from Harvard in 1895. He helped to found the NAACP and became the director of Publicity and Research, which included being the publisher and editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis, which hit a circulation of 100,000 in 1920. In the 1920s DuBois became involved in the Pan African movement and promoted Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa movement before breaking with Garvey over political issues (DuBois disagreed with Garvey’s position that African Americans should move to Africa to become the new leadership of Africa.)

His life really is complicated and there is far too much that is important. But at 93 he moved to Africa and after the US suspended his passport in 1963 he officially became a citizen of Ghana where he died at the age of 95. I want to read a good biography of him, if anyone has a suggestion I would like to hear it.

The Souls of Black Folks is a fairly early work. It was published in 1903, just 7 years after finishing his PhD. It is far more wide ranging than I would have guessed. And without making this a 2000 word post, there isn’t really any way to cover all of it.

It is fascinating to read about the internal politics of the African American world at the time. His fight with Booker T Washington or his philosophy of education for African Americans or his fight against corrupt pastors are all covered here.

One of the most interesting chapters for me was the fictional chapter that looked at the result of two promising young men from a small town that go away to be educated and how they are helped and hindered and return to their community. One is black and one is white. The story is really a tragedy, but that fictional story cuts through reality in such a different way than some of his historical or sociological essays.

DuBois can write. The era it was written in did have a different style of writing than what is common today. But it really is beautiful writing. I listened to it as an audiobook. It is in the public domain so you can fairly easily find a free copy of it on Kindle. It does make me want to read more by and about DuBois.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful