The Souls of Black Folk

While reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, I asked myself whether any other book offered such penetrating insight into the black experience in equally impressive prose. The first name that came to me was The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. The Souls of Black Folk was published......more

"I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, As the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Look not upon me, because I am black, Because the sun hath looked upon me: My mother's children were angry with me; They made me the keeper of the vineyards; But mine own vineyard have I not kept." - So......more

an imperfect book, made perfect by its imperfections. perfection is cold; this is a warm book, hot at times. complex and flawed and all too human; anger and mourning and judgment doled out in equal measures. Du Bois' sad and often seething voice rings from the page. surprisingly lush and stylized pr......more

W.E.B. Du Bois was many things: pioneering social scientist, historian, activist, social critic, writer—and, most of all, a heck of a lot smarter than me. I say this because, while reading these essays, I had the continuous, nagging feeling of mental strain, which I found hard to account for. There......more

The soul and strength of Black America, and the travails and injustices confronting Black Americans, come through with undeniable force in W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903). This collection of essays is every bit as powerful in its examination of American racism as it was when it was f......more