And Mama don’t care if folks are ignorant about her children. But Mama says Black folks don’t get tans. She looks like she went out in the sun and stayed a long time and got a tan. She’s got a gap in her teeth like Mama’s too. That’s how you can tell that she’s a Black girl. But in the back of her head, she’s got a kitchen. Lydia’s hair is long, too, but won’t hold a curl. Her hair’s like Mama’s, and it grows real long. Her nose is wide like Mama’s, and she’s real short, too. Coco’s eyes and skin match, like caramel candy. I got red in my skin underneath the brown like my granny. She makes her hair straight with a hot comb and blue grease. Mama’s dark like chocolate and little and pretty. Daddy’s got brown eyes, but he looks like a white man. She teaches creative writing and literature at University of Oklahoma.
Jeffers is a fiction writer, poet, and essayist, and is the author of five poetry collections, including the 2020 collection The Age of Phillis, which won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry and the PEN/Voelcker Award. Du Bois, a story of grappling with identity, ancestry, and heritage. The following is excerpted from Honorée Fanonne Jeffers's new novel, The Love Songs of W.
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