Author and poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers discusses her inspiration behind new book, “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois”
Author, poet and professor of English at the University of Oklahoma Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, on far left, attended the Dodge Poetry Festival at the Performing Arts Center in Newark, NJ back in 2016. (Martin Alonso/Flickr)
The College of Arts and Humanities hosted a virtual lecture with author and poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers and the associate professor at the University of Texas-San Antonio Dr. Kerry Sinanan to promote Jeffers’ debut novel “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois” on Monday.
The book was released in July and has gotten high reviews including earning a spot on the latest Oprah's Book Club collection.
During the lecture, Jeffers opened up about her Afro-Indigenous background, and how it influences her literature. In one of the opening questions, Sinanan brought up how deep archival research has been crucial to Jeffers’ work, “The Age of Phillis” and “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois” when it comes to Black culture and history. When it comes to trying to find the truth about Black history in the United States, Jeffers felt it was almost impossible because it is limited. Because of her own involvement with the archives along with her mother’s experience searching them while she was in graduate school at Atlanta University, she’s very familiar with how complicated they can be when it comes to getting access to them.
Jeffers’ first encounter with the archives was at the University of North Carolina at Temple Hill. When she read over the letters of enslaved people, she said they were real people to her and not just historical figures on a piece of paper.
“I immediately, however, viewed myself as a guest. I didn’t see myself as belonging in this space,” Jeffers said.
It was not until she met her mentor, Caroline Slope, at the American Antiquarian Society that she realized that she wasn’t just a poet looking through the archives but a historian as well. Because of the respect that her mentor gave her, she was shocked to be treated dismissively when she visited the Massachusetts Historical Society. She was told that they don’t let just anyone visit. After asking how many Black people were allowed in and didn’t get a straight answer, she realized that because she was Black, history was in the purview of white people who control who has access to the archives.
“My experience has always been that as a Black person, I have been ruptured from my own history,” Jeffers said. “This had nothing to do with my being just a poet. This had nothing to do with how I wasn’t dressed a particular way. This is happening all over the place.”
Jeffers also mentioned she gained knowledge in more ways than the archives. Through the Native American practice of visioning, she was able to interact with ancestral guides and gain more insight into history that the archives couldn’t give her.
Although she mentions being uncomfortable talking about her history, she mentioned a few people that helped her understand visioning. One of those people was Cherokee scholar and colleague Gary Hobson. After moving to Oklahoma, which has a large population of Native American people, Hobson encouraged her to identify with her Afro-Indigenous heritage.
Through her experience with both the archives and visioning, Jeffers realized that history is looked at through a Christian perspective, which is why history can seem one-dimensional. What she learned through visioning was how Christianity affects how the world views other cultures in a usually negative light.
“If someone can accept Christian values — miracles, visions, prophecies — all of that, why can’t we accept that in other cultures?” Jeffers asked.
That is why sharing history, although sometimes difficult, is so important to Jeffers. She mentioned how young people can sometimes complain about hearing about slavery all the time but she insisted that it’s important to keep on repeating it so it can stay in everyone’s memory.
“If you don’t remember this in five years, ten years, they will have erased all of this,” Jeffers said.
“The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois” is currently available in all major retail stores for purchase.