Kruse's Key: Read Deere's "Surprised by the Spirit" to Learn About Healing Today

Jack’s Deere’s “Why I Am Still Surprised by the Spirit: Discovering How God Speaks and Heals Today” walks the fine line of personal testimony and historical/theological analysis as he tackles the subject of the Holy Spirit, “signs and wonders”, and healing in today’s church. At one time Deere was an avid naysayer of healing in the modern church–as a seminary professor he scoffed at what he viewed as snake oil salesmen purporting to heal amidst overwrought theatrics and questionable motives. All that changed when a pastor named Dr. John White led a prayer service at his church that culminated in a miraculous event after which Deere clearly heard God’s voice call him to repentance for his arrogance and lack of faith. Shortly thereafter he was introduced to John Wimber and “praying for the sick became a permanent part of [his] life.”

As someone who has spent several years in Africa and befriended many missionaries, I’ve never doubted that God still heals today but I’ve never considered it as something attainable in my own life or for my own loved ones. Deere’s story has changed my mind because he doesn’t focus on healing or miracles except in the context of an intimacy with God the creator. These things should glorify God–should focus people’s eyes upward–never on the person or on self-gratification

Looking for book ideas? Check out our 2024,  2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 reading lists!

Notes

98 Rebuttal against Hebrews 2: 3-4 used by cessationists.

114 Scriptural reasons that God heals:

Because he is asked

Because he has compassion and mercy on the sick

To bring glory to himself

In response to his promise to the elders

In response to faith

To lead people to repentance and open doors to the gospel

To remove hindrances to ministry and service

To reach us about himself and his kingdom

To demonstrate the presence of his kingdom

For sovereign purposes known only to himself


120-121 We tend to doubt God’s goodness, especially when we are asking for something big. We believe Satan’s lies that God only heals us or heals people when we/they are good. “We overcome the accuser by placing our confidence in the blood of Christ.


143 N.T. mentioned 7 specific demonic inroads:

Anger and unforgiveness

Sexual immorality

Violence

Hatred (envy, jealousy, & selfish ambition)

Occult practices

Long term idolatry

Blasphemy (attributing evil to God)


172 Part of his daily prayer:

Now Lord consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.


173 1949 Scottish Hebrides revival


182 Every day I pray to be like Barnabas: “a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith” through whom “a great number of people were brought to the Lord.” (Acts 11:24)


205 A spiritual gift: an endowment of grace empowered by the Holy Spirit to build up the people to God


215 Best translation of the bible: “The one that says to love your enemies.” …”we don’t fail because we can’t defend our view of the millennium, we fail because we want some things more than we want a friendship with God.”


216 Pray Psalm 119: 18

Pray for God to open your eyes.

“Open my eyes so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.”

AsK God to dazzle me with his beauty (Psalm 27:4)

Ask the Father to grant me a work of the Holy Spirit to love his Son like he loves his Son.

Ask God to grant me grace to one of his friends

Ask God to let me be one of his best friends

The goal is is to enjoy God, not endure Him.


217 Before he preaches any command, he gives them a person to enjoy.


222 Christians are to focus on three things:

Prayer

Love

Spiritual gifts


227 Leaders in the church today are burning out because they are crushed by the bulk of the ministry of the church, a ministry that the church members are supposed to be doing.

2024 Reading List

Looking for book ideas?  Check out our 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014  reading lists!

Brazil: A Biography (Audible).  Just finished listening to this 28 hour history of the country. I can't imagine living or working in Brazil and not having read this comprehensive history that dates back to Brazil's "discovery" in the 1500s.  I plan to read the book itself over the next few months and take copious notes! Essential Brasil read.

The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil's Everyday Insurrections.  This book is a collection of essays by reporter Eliane Brum.  In it she sheds light on different facets of Brasilian society normally buried in darkness: Os povos indígenas, minorias sociais, os povos que vivem à margem da sociedade, longe dos núcleos de poder.  Essential Brasil read.

Why I am Still Surprised by the Power of the Spirit: Discovering How God Speaks and Heals Today.  Great read--my full review is here. 

Beartown. Recommended to me as "Friday Night Lights" except with hockey.  That's a pretty fair description for this fast-paced read.  Set in the backwoods of a dying hockey town in Sweden--it's got sports, betrayal, and possibly murder--sports noir at its finest.  And it's a trilogy!

Clandestine in Chile.  Don't recommend.  I really looked forward to reading this novel since I've always loved the magical realism of author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  To be clear, Marquez has some beautiful writing but this journalistic retelling of filmmaker Littins secret mission to film inside Chile and expose the brutality and horror of life under Pinochet reads less like a spy novel and more like an ambling fait accompli/much ado about nearly nothing.  

Brazillionaires (Audible).  Incredible Michael Lewis-style tale of the rise of the 21st century rise (and fall for some) of a billionaire class in Brazil told against the backdrop of corruption, favelas, soccer stadiums, kidnappings and Miami real estate. This book offers keen insight into the Brazilian psyche and society writ large.  Essential Brasil read.

Greenlights (Audible).  Don't read this, I repeat, don't read this.  LISTEN TO IT! The audible version is narrated by author Matthew McConaughey and he's phenomenal: vulnerable, funny, self-deprecating, raw, and at times outrageous!  The book is partly autobiographical and partly self-help as he shares his struggles, failures, triumphs and lessons for the reader. 

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Seen (Audible). A phenomenal and important read.  I listened to it on Audible and about 1/3 of the way through I found it so incredible that I ordered a physical copy so I could reread it make extensive notes.  Author David Brooks offers a framework by which one could be not a better leader but a more caring and empathetic friend and person in general.  I particularly enjoyed some of the questions he uses to better understand where people come from.  One example: In your family what was one thing you could never do?

How to Stop Time (Libby).  By the author of Midnight Library (my review here).  Author Matt Haig is a gifted storyteller and I loved his tale of this secret society of quasi-immortals who through a genetic anomaly age only 1 year for every 14 years on earth.  It contains all the best elements of historical fiction as the main character's life span centuries, as well as love and loss, and humor.  But what it as good as Midnight Libary?  Not quite.  Toward the novel's end if fizzles a bit, almost as if the author had grown weary--along with the main character--of living and loving across centuries.  

Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro and the Olympic Dream (Brazil book).  Prodigal daughter/Journalist Julianna Barbassa returns to her home city after a childhood spent largely abroad.  Part memoir, part expose, part investigative journalism that covers the national and city politician's ill considered efforts to prepare the city and populace to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Her thorough reporting brings the reader behind the fabric of Brazilian government and societal machinations, triumphs, and dysfunction. Essential Brasil read.

A Promised Land (Libby).  It's riveting. This 700 page (29 hours!) memoir was recommended by a high school classmate of mine in his bi-monthly book newsletter: Mountain Prairie.  Here's a quote from his writeup: 

What I look for in a memoir: Fun-to-read writing; laugh-out-loud humor; deep dives into the “why” of pivotal decisions; a detailed understanding of the people/places/experiences/cultures that shaped the author’s worldview; enlightening historical context; the author’s most brutal challenges and how they were overcome; opportunities to evolve my thinking on a few topics; humility; passion; purpose; commitment; optimism; self-doubt; extreme hard work; and crazy behind-the-scenes stories. What I don’t look for in a memoir: To have my preexisting opinions confirmed; to agree in lockstep with the author’s ideas/choices/worldview; surface-level boringness; or prose obviously written by a team of insufferable PR suits. Conclusion: This book met and/or exceeded all of my criteria and now sits alongside Acid for the Children and Shoe Dog as an all-time favorite memoir.

This memoir delivers--engrossing and full of insights into what a president goes through on a daily basis--from thought process, to congressional politics to family dynamics.  No matter your politics you'll enjoy this humble and thoughtful retrospective.  It ends right after they kill Osama so I cant wait for the next book!

The Invisibles (Brazil book).  Came across this book on a colleague's bookshelf and he kindly let me borrow it.  I liked it so much that I ordered a copy of my own!  A British woman and a Brazilian man fall in love in the 70's and have a child.  Unfortunately, he falls on hard times and ends up jailed under the military dictatorship.  His wife and child flee to England and never return believing him dead...until some 30 years later when a news clip give his son hope his father might still be alive in Rio.  Thus begins a journey for one man's father but also his long lost country--all against the backdrop of a class/tranche of society that often feels invisible--hence the name.   Brasil read.

Demon Copperhead (Libby).  Currently reading.  Engrossing so far. Pulitzer Prize winner.

A Death in Brazil.  Currently reading.

Embarrassing List of Books I've said I'm going to finish for several years:

Tribe of Mentors.  Currently reading for the last three years. My full review will be here...one day

The Italians. Was reading but misplaced the book.  If I find it I will finish it.

Kruse's Keys: Read (don't listen) to "Uncertain Ground" to Better Understand What it Means to be an American Citizen

I regret ever listening to Phil Klay’s 2022 collection of essays Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War–I should have read it instead. As I listened to his 20 essays (divided into 4 sections: Soldiers, Citizen, Writing, and Faith) driving back and forth from the Licola suburbs to the U.S. Naval Base at Capodichino, I muttered countless complaints that there’s no way to take notes or make highlights in the Libby or Audible app! If I’d had a paperback version its margins would be scribbled with notes, quotes, and highlights…and this review would be a much stronger one.

For the uninitiated, Phil Klay is part of a slim company of writers (e.g., Ben Fountain, Atticus Lish, Roxana Robinson, Nate Fick, Andrew Exum, Gavin Kovite, Christopher Robinson, Elliot Ackerman) who grapple with America’s invisible conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and places most Americans don’t even realize we’re fighting. When I read his two earlier novels, Redeployment and Missionaries, I remember thinking every American needs to read these books. My hope being that his stories might wear away the calluses of an American public largely ignorant of the military service members’ sacrifices and scars. I observed that reading Redeployment could serve as a cathartic communion of sorts for the reader, a chance for those who haven't served to break bread with those who have sacrificed so much.

As I read Uncertain Ground, however, I continuously thought every service member needs to read this book. Klay’s essays focus on yes, what it means to serve, but more so what it means to be an American citizen. Quick note: It's to Klay’s credit that the author makes it quite clear that he never saw combat as a Marine Corps public affairs officer–he must have mentioned this fact some twenty times in the book. Countless other service members obfuscate their historical service leaving the public to guess or infer the nature of it. Klay’s clarity lends credibility to his writing as he is at times a marine once removed, an outsider listening and digesting all of his fellow marines’ combat trauma to shake the military reader awake to her responsibilities to be an active citizen engaged in the political process. One point he made that struck me, in particular, was the way he highlighted the knee-jerk military reaction that devalues anyone’s opinion on war who hasn’t served. I’m guilty of this. Klay makes a strong argument that the constitutional call for every American is to grapple with and hold our legislative and executive branches accountable for the lives of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

This is a book that I’ll order a paper copy of–I’d like the chance to read it again and mark it up, and discuss it with colleagues. He shares so many phenomenal insights (e.g., his approach to writing, his Catholic faith), that I want to be sure to capture them to refer to in future writing and conversations.

My 2015 review of Redeployment is here.
My 2021 review of Missionaries is here.

Looking for book ideas? Check out our 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 reading lists!

Kruse's Keys: Don't Read "The Passenger"--You'll Thank Me For Saving You the Time

If you loved McCarthy’s writing in All the Pretty Horses, well, you won’t encounter it here.  This is less a novel and more of a scientific, philosophical thought experiment put to paper.  Buoyed by only the scarcest of plotlines we follow the wonderings of main character Bobby Western, an increasingly paranoid salvage diver plagued by a familial guilt over his father’s central role in the creation of the atom bomb.  The Bobby chapters are interspersed with italicized encounters between Bobby’s sister and an hallucinatory array of mishapen, circus-like characters.  Unfortunately, the conversations are so non-sensical that I skimmed through them after their third appearance. In Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing he advises writers to “try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”  McCarthy fails to heed any such advice and stocks this novel full of skippable pages.

To top it all off, there’s a weird quasi-incestual relationship implied between Bobby Western and his decade younger sister.  From what I could tell, it doesn’t represent anything–it’s not a metaphor for some lofty idea–it’s just weird and sick and makes me question McCarthy all together.  

Of course, I’m just a clanging cymbal since the novel continues to receive accolades from most critics.  Reader beware.

Looking for book ideas? Check out our 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 reading lists!

Key Quotes: 

69  I knew that freedom was just lke it says in speeches. It's worth whaetever you have to pay to get it.

93  Tugs don't break up.  Tugs are forever.

137  Coming upon a certain book in the library and clutching it to you.  Carrying it home.  Some perfect place to to read it.  Under a tree perhaps...And of course it's true that any number of these books were penned in lieu of burning down the world--which was the author's true desire.  

141  What a man seeks is beauty, plain and simple.  No other way to put it.  The rustle of her clothes, her scent.  The sweep of her hair across his naked stomach.  

143  Having read even a few dozen books in common is a force more binding than blood. 

180  Beauty makes promises that beauty can't keep.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to Present (notes and quotes)

 Note: My poem review of the book is posted here.

It’s hubris to believe that the American history we learned in high school and college is sufficient.  As foreign area officers, it’s imperative that we be experts in our own nation’s history and be humble enough to acknowledge its shortcomings. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee’s central thesis is that American Indian history did not end in 1890 (the massacre’s date) but instead was a low point from which modern Indian life emerged.  In its title, the author takes issue with Bury My Heart’s fatalism for the American Indian’s future–he argues that the massacre was NOT a signpost pointing back to an Indian past and forward to an American future.  This is the history of modern American Indian that you never knew.  

“Lost in all accounts of the years between 1918 and 1956 is the knowledge that the only reason there were any Indians left all was that they had fought.  They had fought against the government, and they had fought with it.  Deprived of every conceivable advantage or tool  or clear-heated advocate, they had continued to fight.  Nor just in the ways [Dr. Joseph Kossuth] Dixon and people like him imagined, as warriors astride horse roaming free across the Plains, but rather as husbands and wives and fathers and mothers. As writers and thinkers.  As farmers and soldiers in the Great War.  But what to do when the actual fighting stops and pressures bear down back home?  What to do when you can’t find the fight beyond the one for daily survival?  What to do with that patrimony.” 

• Strength in this book is his liberal peppering of anecdotes

• Federal government went around Indian leaders who wouldn’t sign treaties and made up other leaders who would sign. 

• Successive wars of under and overreach illustrate a lack of relationships and that Indians were treated as a monolithic people.  

Looking for book ideas? Check out our 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 reading lists!

10 Wounded Knee massacre used as convenient signpost of an Indian past and American Future (i.e., no

Indian future)

11 Authors takes exception to bury my heart at wounded knee’s narrative of the fatalism of 

the American indian’s future of hopelessness and squalor on the reservations

15 Thesis: the last 128 years of Indian history.  1890 (Wounded Knee Massacre date) was 

A low point–but it was a point from which the modern Indian life emerged–often and 

mainly  painfully.  

31 3 constants of 1st contact: spread of disease, attempts at slavery, and the spread of 

Information.  Disease, slavery, starvation and disruption.  

32 2 moments in American Southeast standout: Removal and Seminole Wars

35 the real motive: Birth and growth of U.S. wasn’t driven by superior technology, or 

overwhelming numbers but rather “the chief cause was the colonialist setter-state’s willingness to eliminate whole civilizations of people in order to possess their land.” 

58 Spanish modus operandi: slavery, subjugation, and extermination

62-3 unique southwest: that absorbed every wave of immigation (Spanish, Mexican, and 

American) that shaped “the culture and fabric of the place, so much so that to be in the SW is to feel the continued lived presence of Native America.”

64 CA densely populated: before settlers first arrived more Indians lived in CA than the rest 

of U.S.--500 distinct tribes, 100 different languages–more densely settled than Europe.  Had been that way for 17,000 years.  

80 bison annihilation: pre 1800: 60 million Bison.  By 1900: only 541 left!

82 comanche most feared  and horse: by 1800, 2 million wild horses.  Comanche had at 

least 100K in their care–super skilled at breaking wild horses.  Universally feared by Mexicans, spanish and americans.  

84 Osage exceptionalism: sold land in Kansas and bought their own reservation land in 

Oklahoma to include mineral and underground rights.  Fierce negotiators.

94 How the west was won: by blood, brutality, and terror.

105 Oneida role in american revolution and U.S. betrayal: During washington’s winter at 

Valley Forge, the tribe brought them supplies and showed troops how to prepare Indian corn.  Congress rewarded them with a treaty guaranteeing their lands forever.  30 years later, it was already vanished. 

114 post 1871 Assimiliation policy even worse than treaty breaking and warfare that 

preceded it. 

146 1887 Dawes Act passed without consent of Indian tribes.  In retrospect it sold Indian land  

under the guise of allotting the land, and used that money to create boarding schools that stole indian children.  

149 only indian VP: Charles Curtis from Kansas (Herbert Hoover’s VP from 1929-1933).  He 

also passed the Curtis act which he later regretted: brought allotment to Oklahoma but 

did it differently where they had autonomy living in settlements with ability to levy taxes and hold state level public office

168 singular/unique resistance of Ponemah: even to today it remains absolutely pagan with 

no christian churches there.  This doesn’t appear to be accurate–there’s been a Wah-bun chapel there for 30 years! https://centerforindianministries.org/ministry-outreach/ 

172 4 decades post Wounded Knee: a siege against Indian way of life and life

188 Wounded Knee Medal of Honor Recipients (20! For killing women and children)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/us/politics/tribes-medal-honor-wounded-knee.html 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/11/27/soldiers-got-medals-honor-massacr

ing-native-americans-this-bill-would-take-them-away/ 

Disgusting response: https://homeofheroes.com/remove-the-stain-act/ 

197 Joseph Oklahombi: Most decorated Indian hero of WWI. https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=OK091  One of the original code talkers but also received Silver Star and France’s Croix de Guerre for his valiant action at St. Etienne where he reportedly killed 79 German soldiers.  The most daring, though, was Pvt. Joseph Oklahombi, a Choctaw. At Saint-Étienne, Oklahombi was among a group that rushed across 200 yards of open ground. Together they commandeered a German machine gun and turned it on the enemy, killing 79 Germans and taking 171 prisoners. They held them for four days before reinforcements arrived.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/magazine/ojibwe-big-drum.html 

200 1924 all remaining 300K Indians became American citizen but still retained the treaty abrogated aspects of tribal sovereignty–a unique positions.(they weren’t included in the 1868  14th Amendment 

202 “Lost in all accounts of the years between 1918 and 1956 is the knowledge that the only reason there were any Indians left all was that they had fought.  They had fought against the government, and they had fought with it.  Deprived of every conceivable advantage or tool  or clear-heated advocate, they had continued to fight.  Nor just in the ways [Dr. Joseph Kossuth] Dixon and people like him imagined, as warriors astride horse roaming free across the Plains, but rather as husbands and wives and fathers and mothers. As writers and thinkers.  As farmers and soldiers in the Great War.  But what to do when the actual fighting stops and pressures bear down back home?  What to do when you can’t find the fight beyond the one for daily survival?  What to do with that patrimony.” 

217 Acoma story illustrates Indian’s fight to remain Indian and  “American on our terms”

231 On the disease of powerlessness that so many Indians fight “That disease is more potent than most people imagine: that feeling that we’ve lost, that we’ve always lost, that we’ve already lost–our land, our cultures, our communities, ourselves.  But it’s one we’ve managed to beat again and again–in our insistence on our own existence and our successful struggles to exist in our homelands on our own terms.”

244 New deal effects were positive for the Indians in step with rest of the country

246 Post WW2 great migration which brought turkey vulture to the rest of the US as they followed the new interstate system

252 Tribes in the early 20th century began to determine how to navigate and bring suit against the state and federal governments for broken treaties and lost lands but the Ho Chunk case was illustrative of its efficacy–the Court of Claims dismissed their case not because it lacked merit but because the land they lost was too great to place a value to determine a difference from their current reservation!

255 “Indian problem” was always a “federal government problem” 

263 On reservations as both a positive and negative place.  Positive in their function as a home base to promote a sense of community for Indian peoples–however, in the 40s and 50s the fed gov sought instead to terminate–beginning with Menominee of Wisconsin.

277-8 reality of termination: by 1960’s “clearly a catastrophe” with unemployment through the roof and half of Indians living in urban areas by 1970–a huge shift.  Most horrible: 1.37M acres taken out of trust status and 12K Indians losing tribal affiliations.  Later Nixon would say “this policy of forced termination is wrong…”

279 Positives of relocation: mixing of tribes inside cities removes intertribal “bigotry” and helped them to find the common ground they previously ignored.  Intertribe networks strengthened

287 Positives of termination: due to the mixing with other tribes when some returned to reservations, they started to understand themselves as Indians and not just their specific tribe. Previous to 1950, most would never use the term “Indian” to describe themselves

306 In 1972, the American Indian Movement (AIM) tookover the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in DC.  WHile it was highly publicized, it achieved little  but AIM for all its faults was showing that being an Indian was something for to be proud of.

339 “Let me tell you what separates man from beast.  Here it is: salt.”  Indian survivalist Bobby on salt’s necessity when trying to survive, otherwise everything tastes awful.  

364 Many Indians refer to B.C. = Before casinos (i.e., tribal gaming) because it had as profound an effect on Indian life as did the mass migration of Indians to the cities

378 Indian kind of living: “It’s not an American kind of work, but it is an Indian kind: a patchwork of opportunities that are exploited aggressively and together add up to a living.” 

380 On blood quantum: “has always been about ‘the stuff,’ and it has always been about exclusion.” The stuff being offices, annuities, casino profits etc.

401 Language, culture, and religion.  On language: “when a community is whole, language grows out of the web of relationships that make that community; it is a by-product of intergenerational togetherness.”  But many of the these communities lacked the wholeness, generational abuse fracturing them.  “Language has a special role as a carrier of culture.” Some Indian religions could not be separated from their language and couldn’t be practiced in English.  So without a language, there could be no soul, no ceremonies.

405 what we learn from Indians: author posits that the central questions posed and pondered by America’s founding fathers can be found in examining the country’s Indian communities which have always grappled with federal government overreach, individual rights vs. societal ones, how to grow and preserve the middle class etc.  

412 1992 Turning point.  By this point Indians had grown strong enough to resist–physically, politically, and academically.  Indians were harnessing technology, Western education, and wage labor and using them.  “Indians don’t waste what we kill: we use all the parts of the computer.”  p. 417 this was also an inward turn away from the USG and instead occupying “cultural, social, and political space” to 

415 Food–a history/culture.  Sean is an Oglala Lakota (the Sioux Chef)  who is a chef who is making”archival food” –that’s traced and mastered to its roots in Minneapolis through a non-profit that includes restaurants https://sioux-chef.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Eater-Vox-Sioux-Chef-Video-Short.mp4

416 “the story of “the Indian”--has been a story of loss: loss of land, loss of culture, loss of a way of life.  Yes, Indians remain…but inwardly we wonder: How much of our culture remains? “ Sean’s food answer that there is much that remains and only needs to be reached out and grabbed

450 Living and adapt as a central tenet of Indian identity (e.g., Black Elk’s latter years converting to Catholicism etc.

451 Point of the book: “Indians lived on, as more than ghosts, as more than the relics of a once happy people.  We lived on increasingly invested in and changed by–and in turn doing our best to change–the American character.”  Takes issue with Dee Brown’s book that he contends its telling robs the 150 victims of their humanity..they are a tragedy but not a person with dreams and lives…”the victims of Wounded Knee died twice–once at the end of a gun, and again at the end of a pen.”   

Kruse's Key: Read "The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois" Because It Just May Be The Great American Novel

Acclaimed poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ soaring 800-page debut (!) novel (Kirkus prize for fiction finalist) The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois can also be read as a history of the United States in Georgia.  Over the span of 200 years, she unearths the history of a fictional family beginning with the native American tribe originally living in Chicasetta (The Place-In-The-Middle-Of-The-Tall-Trees at the time).  From there we see the intersections, overlaps and violent collisions with the Europeans–later Americans–all bringing with them African slaves who lived in a constant state of tension, terror, and longing.

The people who lived in The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees knew much about the Seminoles, because the Seminoles had once been a part of the Creek people before they had broken off to form their own nation. And the Seminoles gave sanctuary to Negroes, taking them into their villages. They mated with Negroes, too.

It's to Jeffers’ credit that she peels back the layers of this family’s history to its origins in both Africa and to the indigenous people living in North America.  She lays bare the roots of America’s founding:

For the original transgression of this land was not slavery. It was greed, and it could not be contained. More white men would come and begin to covet. And they would drag along the Africans they had enslaved. The white men would sow their misery among those who shook their chains. 

In graphic, painful detail the reader sees the “sowing” of successive generations in Chicasetta.  The culture of rape, assault, and abuse turns one stomach–I had to put down the book many times in disgust and horror.  While this is fiction, it’s clear that Jeffers  is drawing on the 15 years she spent researching original source archival documents for her 2020 Age of Phillis (longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry).  Using the modern day descendent of these collisions in the person of Ailey Garfield, the author records her life from birth through her pursuit of a doctorate in history.  In the Age of Phillis, Jeffers examined and corrected the record of the life of Phillis Wheatley–an 18th century poet–the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry.  Previous to Jeffers’ book, all that was known of Wheatley’s life came from what a white woman (purported to be a relative of the woman who owned Wheatley) wrote 50 years after her death.  

Much as Jeffers labored in researching Phillis Wheatley’s life, so Ailey labors in uncovering her own family’s history.  Along the way, addiction, sexual abuse, and racism threaten to unmoor her but it is her parents and family that keep her tethered as she holds on to sacrament that is family.  The novel’s strengths rests in the masterful way that Jeffers tells a story not just about one family but also about a piece of land, and also about Africa, and also about America, and also about the African American struggle for freedom, and also about the civil rights movement, and also about what it means to be a black woman in America. 

Ever since 1868 when novelist John William DeForest coined the term the “Great American Novel”--there has been much debate over which novel should bear the moniker.  Critics and scholars argue about esteemed titles from To Kill a Mockingbird to American Psycho to The Great Gatsby to Moby Dick to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to The Invisible Man to Blood Meridian. There will always be debate about this because even the term “The Great American Novel” is impossible to define because it must not only capture the scope of America on the micro and macro level, it must also be personal but also removed, it must encompass both the greatest things about this country but also its cancers.  One would be hard pressed to deny that The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois does all of these things–it is a novel of but also’s–it refuses to tell only one story–it strives instead to tell every story.  And who better to have written the “The Great American Novel” than a poet?***  

Because what is America but poetry? 

Something sometimes metered

in perfect rhyming syllables,

leaping

other times and 

Frac

TURED

In tortured mispalld guttural gasps

But always sharp as a steeled knife

As able to slip into our ribs 

Sink into our hearts

As it is to shave aways the callouses of 

Of our differences.

Jeffer’s Ailey endures.  She persists–full of self doubt and accumulated blows–imperfect but buoyant–she strives to triumph.  

Ailey rises on the backs 

No–the wings of her ancestors who fought

across gritted striped generations

The matriarch arriving in chains from Africa for whom Jeffers writes:

She was owned, but her memories were not.

***I wrote this last paragraph on Love Songs as The Great American Novel BEFORE reading the Kirkus review on it

Looking for book ideas? Check out our 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 reading lists!

Related Reading:

My review of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.  

My review of Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  

My review of The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.  

My review of Sing, Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward.

My review of Homeland Elegies by Ayad Ahktar

My review of Seasons of the Shadow by Leonara Miano.  This novel explores slavery’s collision with a village in Cameroon.

My Kindle Highlights for Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

“Violence and the Social Compact” by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Atlantic article)

The Lynching of Claude Neal.  PBS article is here.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood. 

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to Present

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Key quotes:

Location: 150

For the original transgression of this land was not slavery. It was greed, and it could not be contained. More white men would come and begin to covet. And they would drag along the Africans they had enslaved. The white men would sow their misery among those who shook their chains. These white men would whip and work and demean these Africans.

Location: 172

The people who lived in The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees knew much about the Seminoles, because the Seminoles had once been a part of the Creek people before they had broken off to form their own nation. And the Seminoles gave sanctuary to Negroes, taking them into their villages. They mated with Negroes, too.

Location: 383

And then the treaties, the agreements between these intruders and the people, all of which would be broken, and the land that would be taken—and taken again. There was the Treaty of Savannah in 1733. The Treaty of Coweta in 1739. The Treaty of Augusta in 1763. Ten years later, a second treaty in that same place. The Treaty of New York in 1790, and the realization that our land would

Location: 396

The Treaty of Washington in 1805, and our land was no longer what the people called it. Now the white men called us “Georgia.”

Location: 987

Yet battle was different when it occurred on paper and in assaults on the mind. The white men—the Americans—wanted everything and did not respect the ways of the people.

Location: 1,987

The light-skinned woman was a signare, a woman of English and African blood who’d been given by her family as a wife to an Englishman for as long as he stayed in Africa. In this small district, this woman was the only one of her kind, but closer to the coast, there was an entire community of signares and their families. In-between women who were neither true wives nor concubines. They spoke two languages, Wolof and English, or sometimes, Mandinka and English, but were infidels who had left aside Allah and clung to the skinny Jesus that hung on a cross. Like their white fathers and husbands, the signares traded in slaves.

Location: 2,136

She was owned, but her memories were not.

Location: 3,523

To paraphrase the great poet Sterling A. Brown: ‘More Negroes have been ruined by Harvard than by bad gin.’ Only he didn’t say ‘Negroes,’ if you catch my drift.”

Location: 4,255

Before he allowed Geoff to take his great-niece on their northbound journey, Uncle Root gave him a copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book, so they could find diners, hotels, and boardinghouses that would serve them, once they traveled out of family territory.

Location: 4,577

Born in the City, her husband wasn’t familiar with the taste of healthy, green food you had picked only hours before. The sight of earth not taken over by concrete. That in darkness, if there was no trouble, the only sounds came from small beings. He didn’t know that you could ache for a place, even when it had hurt you so badly.

Location: 4,699

“Are the folks down home calling themselves something besides Negro?” “Like what, baby?” “Like, Black?” “Why they want to do something like that? That ain’t a nice thing to call nobody.”

Location: 7,336

How to explain what it was like to be Black to this white woman who wasn’t even southern? That a Black child didn’t have a right to hate their Black mama? Hatred was not allowed against your parents, no matter what had happened. You had to forgive your parents for whatever they had done even if they’d never apologized, because everybody had to stay together. So much had been lost already to Black folks.

Location: 8,737

Then there came warriors, such as Tecumseh of the Shawnee, a tribe in the north of the continent. And there were prophets, such as Tecumseh’s brother Tenskwatawa. Together these men were the Shooting Star and the Open Door, and they rode down to our land to unite our people of the south with our people of the north. Tecumseh held a weapon and Tenskwatawa held a dream, and the dreaming brother’s sights led him to tell the Creek, unite against the white man. 

And our people kept fighting each other, and an American murderer was able to win the Red Stick War. His name was Andrew Jackson and he and his soldiers murdered many hundreds of Creeks, so that his name would become a curse among our people. Indian Killer, he would be called, but somehow he would become a hero among white men. In a new century, statues of him would be built, and his face would be printed upon money.

Location: 8,751

And in time, Andrew Jackson the Indian Killer became the president of his white man’s nation. And in 1830, this murderer signed the Indian Removal Act, after which the Creek people’s hope turned to the mud after a heavy rain, for this law decreed that all Creek people were ordered to leave their homes permanently.

Location: 11,631 On post-reconstruction reality for “freed” slaves

They were frightened of being lynched, now that Black bodies no longer were worth valuable currency on the slave market.