The Souls of Black Folk: With "The Talented Tenth" and "The Souls of White Folk" (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Du Bois, W. E. B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014018998X ISBN 13: 9780140189988

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 1996

Synopsis

When The Souls of Black Folk was first published in 1903, it had a galvanizing effect on the conversation about race in America - and it remains both a touchstone in the literature of African America and a beacon in the fight for civil rights. W. E. B. Du Bois combines history and stirring autobiography to reflect on the magnitude of American racism and to chart a path forward against oppression.

About this title

Review

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868--1963) is the greatest of African-American intellectuals--a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation's history from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, Du Bois penned his epochal masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work; its insights into Negro life at the turn of the 20th century still ring true.

With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment influences that peppered his impassioned yet formal prose, the book's largely autobiographical chapters take the reader through the momentous and moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation Proclamation--from poverty, the neoslavery of the sharecropper, illiteracy, miseducation and lynching, to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual "sorrow songs" that birthed gospel and the blues. The most memorable passages are contained in "On Booker T Washington and Others", where Du Bois criticises his famous contemporary's rejection of higher education and accommodationist stance toward white racism: "Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races", he writes, further complaining that Washington's thinking "withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens". The capstone of The Souls of Black Folk, though, is Du Bois' haunting, eloquent description of the concept of the black psyche's "double consciousness", which he described as "a peculiar sensation....One ever feels this twoness--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". Thanks to WEB Du Bois' commitment and foresight--and the intellectual excellence expressed in this timeless literary gem--black Americans can today look in the mirror and rejoice in their beautiful black, brown and beige reflections. --Eugene Holley Jr

Review

"[The Souls of Black Folk is] the foundation on which Du Bois built a lifetime of ideas, and on which the black and antiracist intelligentsia continues to build today. . . . In 1903 . . . black newspapers . . . typically shouted in unison, 'SHOULD BE READ AND STUDIED BY EVERY PERSON, WHITE AND BLACK.' . . . And today it still SHOULD BE READ AND STUDIED BY EVERY PERSON." --Ibram X. Kendi, from the Introduction

"A work that is still relevant today . . . Vividly depict[s] what it was like to be black . . . Many of the ideas that Du Bois outlined in the book still endure. . . . [A book] for anyone who wants to understand America." --Lynn Neary, NPR's Morning Edition

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 014018998X
• ISBN 13: 9780140189988
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288