Cover ArtLove Songs is an unapologetically Black, feminist (womanist) novel; it is also an American novel. Ailey Pearl Garfield is a scholar, a feminist, a survivor of childhood sexual trauma, an historian, a girl, is of Indigenous, white, and Black heritage, and has impeccable home training. Spending the majority of this book's 879 pages with her is so delightful. And, though I cried several times during this book, I also cried because it was over. This gift of a book is pedagogical. It helped me to see the flaws in racial assumptions that I didn't even know I possessed. I can't wait to read this one again.
 
Publisher's description: To come to terms with who she is and what she wants, Ailey, the daughter of an accomplished doctor and a strict schoolteacher, embarks on a journey through her family's past, helping her embrace her full heritage, which is the story of the Black experience in itself.