The Souls of Black Folk

About the book

Du Bois brings several forms of writing together to consider the conditions of Black life in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. Historical argument, social observation, autobiography, and imaginative narrative address education, labour, religion, political leadership, and the enduring effects of racial exclusion. The idea of double consciousness gives language to the strain of living within a society that denies full recognition. Individual scenes make broad arguments tangible, while the book's attention to spirituals connects cultural expression with collective memory. Its chapters invite reading both separately and in relation to one another. The result is a work concerned with material opportunity and with the authority to describe an inward life that dominant public accounts have failed to understand.

• Racial exclusion
• Education and opportunity
• Identity and cultural memory

Why read it

For the range of forms through which Du Bois joins public argument to lived and inward experience.

English text