Download or read book Trending in Love written by Pankaj Dubey and published by India Penguin Metro Reads. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sanam is a carefree, but headstrong young girl. A spat with a politician's son pushes her take up a big challenge-to become an IAS. At the same time, a small-town boy, Aamir, is nudged into studying for the civil services too. Their hard work pays off when both become rank holders. And soon their lives come together at the IAS Training Academy, Mussoorie. Love blossoms, but when they decide to spend their lives together, all hell breaks loose. Their religious difference become a reason for clashes between the two communities, social media explodes and things take a dangerous turn. It seems hate has triumphed over love. What will be Sanam and Aamir's fate? A heady mix of dreams and desire, this is a story of undying love in the face of our society's most dangerous beliefs.

Download or read book Conversations on Love written by Natasha Lunn and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of love in all its forms, featuring conversations with Lisa Taddeo, Esther Perel, Emily Nagoski, Kate Bowler, Alain de Botton, Stephen Grosz, Roxane Gay and others Journalist Natasha Lunn was almost 30 when she realized that there was no map for understanding love. While she was used to watching friends fall in and out of love, the older she got the more she had to acknowledge: her friends' relationship struggles could no longer be chalked up to youth, and the more she learned about her parents, grandparents, work colleagues, and mentors the clearer it became that age had not brought any of them any closer to understanding this elusive, transformative, consuming emotion. One night during the months she found this realization settling over her, she sat up in bed and jotted three words in a notebook: conversations on love. In that moment, Lunn understood that she didn't want advice about love, she wasn't looking for the answers, or evergreen wisdom but she craved candid, wide-ranging, sometimes uncomfortable conversations about the parts of love that often don't make it into our everyday discussions of marriage, sibling relationships, friendships, or mother/daughter bonds. Conversations on Love started as an experiment aimed at interviewing experts about what love meant to them, in all of it's messiness, and quickly blossomed into a newsletter that attracted thousands of subscribers and a prestigious range of interviewees. It turns out that Lunn wasn't the only person ready to talk more openly and expansively about love. Interweaving personal essays and revealing interviews with some of the most sough-after experts on love, journalist Natasha Lunn guides us through the paradoxical heart of three key questions about love--How do we find love? How do we sustain it? And how do we survive when we lose it?--to deliver a book that is a solace, a beacon, a call to arms, a tool-kit. The real-life love stories in these pages will leave you hopeful and validated, while the insights from experts will transform the way you think about your relationships. Above all, Conversations on Love will remind you what love is: fragile, sturdy, mundane, beautiful, always worth fighting for.

Download or read book In Love written by Amy Bloom and published by Random House. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful memoir of a love that leads two people to find a courageous way to part—and a woman’s struggle to go forward in the face of loss—that “enriches the reader’s life with urgency and gratitude” (The Washington Post) “A pleasure to read . . . Rarely has a memoir about death been so full of life. . . . Bloom has a talent for mixing the prosaic and profound, the slapstick and the serious.”—USA Today ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR Amy Bloom began to notice changes in her husband, Brian: He retired early from a new job he loved; he withdrew from close friendships; he talked mostly about the past. Suddenly, it seemed there was a glass wall between them, and their long walks and talks stopped. Their world was altered forever when an MRI confirmed what they could no longer ignore: Brian had Alzheimer’s disease. Forced to confront the truth of the diagnosis and its impact on the future he had envisioned, Brian was determined to die on his feet, not live on his knees. Supporting each other in their last journey together, Brian and Amy made the unimaginably difficult and painful decision to go to Dignitas, an organization based in Switzerland that empowers a person to end their own life with dignity and peace. In this heartbreaking and surprising memoir, Bloom sheds light on a part of life we so often shy away from discussing—its ending. Written in Bloom’s captivating, insightful voice and with her trademark wit and candor, In Love is an unforgettable portrait of a beautiful marriage, and a boundary-defying love.

Download or read book Wired for Love written by Stan Tatkin and published by New Harbinger Publications. This book was released on 2024-06-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Invaluable for so many partners looking to reconnect and grow closer together." —Gwyneth Paltrow, founder and CEO of goop "Stan Tatkin can be entirely followed into the towering infernos of our most painful relationship challenges." —Alanis Morissette, artist, activist, and wholeness advocate The complete “insider’s guide” to understanding your partner’s brain, sparking lasting connection, and enjoying a romantic relationship built on love and trust—now with more than 170,000 copies sold. “What the heck is my partner thinking?” “Why do they always react like this?” “How can we get back that connection we had in the beginning?” If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, you aren’t alone, and it doesn’t mean that your relationship is doomed. Every person is wired for love differently—with different habits, needs, and reactions to conflict. The good news is that most people’s minds work in predictable ways and respond well to security, attachment, and routines, making it possible to neurologically prime the brain for greater love and connection and fewer conflicts. This go-to guide will show you how. Drawn from neuroscience, attachment theory, and emotion regulation, this highly anticipated second edition of Wired for Love presents cutting-edge research on how and why love lasts, and offers ten guiding principles that can improve any relationship. This fully revised and updated edition also includes new guidance on how to manage disagreements, as well as new exercises to help you create a sense of safety and security, establish healthy conflict ground rules, and deal with the threat of the third—any outside source which threatens the harmony in your relationship, including in-laws, alcohol, children, and affairs. You’ll find proven-effective strategies to help you strengthen your relationship by: Creating and maintaining a safe “couple bubble” Using morning and evening routines to stay connected Learning how to see your partner’s point of view Meeting each other halfway in a fight Becoming the expert on what makes your partner feel loved By using simple gestures and words, you’ll learn to put out emotional fires and help your partner feel appreciated and loved. You’ll also discover how to move past a “warring brain” mentality and toward a more cooperative “loving brain.” Most importantly, you’ll gain a better understanding of the complex dynamics at work behind love and trust in intimate relationships. While there’s no doubt that love is an inexact science, if you understand how you and your partner are wired differently, you can overcome your differences, and create a lasting intimate connection.

Download or read book All About Love written by bell hooks and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation" trilogy. All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces. “The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question “What is love?” her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the “100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life.” All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better.

Download or read book ACT with Love written by Russ Harris and published by New Harbinger Publications. This book was released on 2023-06-01 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Build more compassionate, accepting, and loving relationships with acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Let’s face it: Picture-perfect storybook romances don’t exist in real life. Couples fight. Feelings of love wax and wane through the years. And the stress and tedium of everyday life and work can often drive a wedge between even the most devoted couples. So, how can you reignite passion and intimacy in your relationship, cultivate greater understanding and compassion between yourself and your partner, and bring the joy back to your love life? In this fully revised and updated edition of ACT with Love, therapist and world-renowned ACT expert Russ Harris shows how developing psychological flexibility—the ability to be in the present moment with openness, awareness, and focus, and to take effective action in line with one's values—can help you and your partner strengthen and deepen your relationship. Also included is new information on attachment theory, powerful mindfulness and self-compassion techniques, and assertiveness and boundary-setting skills. ACT with Love will show you how to: Let go of conflict, open up, and live fully in the present Use mindfulness to increase intimacy, connection, and understanding Resolve painful conflicts and reconcile long-standing differences Act on your values to build a rich and meaningful relationship If you’re looking to increase feelings of intimacy, love, and connection with your partner, this book has everything you need to get started—together.

Download or read book The 5 Love Languages written by Gary Chapman and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2014-12-11 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 20 million copies sold! A perennial New York Times bestseller for over a decade! Falling in love is easy. Staying in love—that’s the challenge. How can you keep your relationship fresh and growing amid the demands, conflicts, and just plain boredom of everyday life? In the #1 New York Times international bestseller The 5 Love Languages®, you’ll discover the secret that has transformed millions of relationships worldwide. Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman’s proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner—starting today. The 5 Love Languages® is as practical as it is insightful. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work. Includes the Love Language assessment so you can discover your love language and that of your loved one.

Download or read book Love in the Big City written by Sang Young Park and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A funny, transporting, surprising, and poignant novel that was one of the highest-selling debuts of recent years in Korea, Love in the Big City tells the story of a young gay man searching for happiness in the lonely city of Seoul Love in the Big City is the English-language debut of Sang Young Park, one of Korea’s most exciting young writers. A runaway bestseller, the novel hit the top five lists of all the major bookstores, went into twenty-six printings, and was praised for its unique literary voice and perspective. It is now poised to capture a worldwide readership. Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and ice-cold Marlboro Reds that they keep in their freezer. Yet over time, even Jaehee leaves Young to settle down, leaving him alone to care for his ailing mother and to find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life. A brilliantly written novel that takes us into the glittering nighttime of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning after with both humor and emotion, Love in the Big City is a wry portrait of millennial loneliness as well as the abundant joys of queer life.

Download or read book On Romantic Love written by Berit Brogaard and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Romantic love presents some of life's most challenging questions. Can we choose who to love? Is romantic love rational? Can we love more than one person at a time? And can we make ourselves fall out of love? In On Romantic Love, Berit Brogaard attempts to get to the bottom of love's many contradictions. This short book, informed by both historical and cutting edge philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, combines a new theory of romantic love with entertaining anecdotes from real life and accessible explanations of the neuroscience underlying our wildest passions. Against the grain, Brogaard argues that love is an emotion; that it can be, at turns, both rational and irrational; and that it can be manifested in degrees. We can love one person more than another and we can love a person a little or a lot or not at all. And love isn't even always something we consciously feel. However, love -- like other emotions, both conscious and not -- is subject to rational control, and falling in or out of it can be a deliberate choice. This engaging and innovative look at a universal topic, featuring original line drawings by illustrator Gareth Southwell, illuminates the processes behind heartbreak, obsession, jealousy, attachment, and more.

Download or read book The Five Love Languages written by Gary Chapman and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2009-12-17 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marriage should be based on love, right? But does it seem as though you and your spouse are speaking two different languages? #1 New York Times bestselling author Dr. Gary Chapman guides couples in identifying, understanding, and speaking their spouse's primary love language-quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, or physical touch. By learning the five love languages, you and your spouse will discover your unique love languages and learn practical steps in truly loving each other. Chapters are categorized by love language for easy reference, and each one ends with simple steps to express a specific language to your spouse and guide your marriage in the right direction. A newly designed love languages assessment will help you understand and strengthen your relationship. You can build a lasting, loving marriage together. Gary Chapman hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio program called A Love Language Minute that can be heard on more than 150 radio stations as well as the weekly syndicated program Building Relationships with Gary Chapman, which can both be heard on fivelovelanguages.com. The Five Love Languages is a consistent New York Times bestseller - with over 5 million copies sold and translated into 38 languages. This book is a sales phenomenon, with each year outselling the prior for 16 years running!

Download or read book Love Rules written by Joanna Coles and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For those looking for a smart, no-bullshit, effective guide to finding love, look no further."—Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity "While I’m not sure what Carrie Bradshaw would have made of today’s new world of dating, I do know this: armed with Love Rules, she would have figured it all out in one season."—Sarah Jessica Parker Sheryl Sandberg empowered women to lean in. Arianna Huffington Encouraged them to thrive. Now, Joanna Coles guides them on their most important journey: finding love. Love Rules will enable you to identify what you want in a relationship, when you should pursue it, and how to find it. Just as there is junk food, there is junk love. And like junk food, junk love is fast, convenient, attractively packaged, widely available, superficially tasty—and leaves you hungering for more. And both junk food and junk love require enormous amounts of willpower to resist. Social media and online dating sites have become the supermarkets of our relationship lives. You have to wade through rows of cupcakes and potato chips to find the produce aisle, where those relationships grounded in intimacy and trust live—the ones worth your investment. A diet book for romantic relationships, Love Rules first asks women to re-assess the way they think about their relationships, and then helps them use that newfound awareness to navigate their love lives more successfully in this very modern, fast-paced—and often lonely—digital age. In these pages leading media exec and former Editor in Chief of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire Joanna Coles provides a series of simple guidelines for finding worthwhile love: fifteen rules—love "hacks." She also explains how to use dating apps effectively to expand real world connections and how to avoid DADD—dating attention—deficit disorder, where the tantalizing promise of someone better appears to be only the next swipe away.

Download or read book Love in the Library written by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in an incarceration camp where the United States cruelly detained Japanese Americans during WWII and based on true events, this moving love story finds hope in heartbreak. To fall in love is already a gift. But to fall in love in a place like Minidoka, a place built to make people feel like they weren’t human—that was miraculous. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Tama is sent to live in a War Relocation Center in the desert. All Japanese Americans from the West Coast—elderly people, children, babies—now live in prison camps like Minodoka. To be who she is has become a crime, it seems, and Tama doesn’t know when or if she will ever leave. Trying not to think of the life she once had, she works in the camp’s tiny library, taking solace in pages bursting with color and light, love and fairness. And she isn’t the only one. George waits each morning by the door, his arms piled with books checked out the day before. As their friendship grows, Tama wonders: Can anyone possibly read so much? Is she the reason George comes to the library every day? Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s beautifully illustrated, elegant love story features a photo of the real Tama and George—the author’s grandparents—along with an afterword and other back matter for readers to learn more about a time in our history that continues to resonate.

Download or read book The Mathematics of Love written by Hannah Fry and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A mathematician pulls back the curtain and reveals the hidden patterns--from dating sites to divorce, sex to marriage--behind the rituals of love ... applying mathematical formulas to the most common yet complex questions pertaining to love: What's the chance of finding love? What's the probability that it will last? How do online dating algorithms work, exactly? Can game theory help us decide who to approach in a bar? At what point in your dating life should you settle down?"--Amazon.com.

Download or read book With Lots of Love written by Jenny Torres Sanchez and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautiful, lyrical story about a girl who moves from her home in Central America to the United States, and everything she leaves behind and longs for—especially her Abuela—as she makes a new life. Rocio has grown up in Central America, but now she and her family are moving to the United States. Rocio does her best to adjust to a new way of living, but there are many things she misses from her old life—Abuela’s cooking, Abuela’s pinata creations, Abuela’s warm hugs, and of course, Abuela herself most of all. But Abuela finds a way to send Rocio something special just in time for her birthday—a gift wrapped with lots of love—and that fills Rocio to the brim.

Download or read book How to Fall in Love with Anyone written by Mandy Len Catron and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir” (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the author of the popular New York Times essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” explores the romantic myths we create and explains how they limit our ability to achieve and sustain intimacy. What really makes love last? Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts? Or does obsessing over those love stories hurt our real-life relationships? When her parents divorced after a twenty-eight year marriage and her own ten-year relationship ended, those were the questions that Mandy Len Catron wanted to answer. In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, “Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation” (Bookpage). She delves back to 1944, when her grandparents met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from. And she tells the story of how she decided to test an experiment that she’d read about—where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions—and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship. “Perfect fodder for the romantic and the cynic in all of us” (Booklist), How to Fall in Love with Anyone flips the script on love. “Clear-eyed and full of heart, it is mandatory reading for anyone coping with—or curious about—the challenges of contemporary courtship” (The Toronto Star).

Download or read book Modern Romance written by Aziz Ansari and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-06-14 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 New York Times Bestseller “An engaging look at the often head-scratching, frequently infuriating mating behaviors that shape our love lives.” —Refinery 29 A hilarious, thoughtful, and in-depth exploration of the pleasures and perils of modern romance from Aziz Ansari, the star of Master of None and one of this generation’s sharpest comedic voices At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history. With technology, our abilities to connect with and sort through these options are staggering. So why are so many people frustrated? Some of our problems are unique to our time. “Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?” “Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods? Combos?!” “My girlfriend just got a message from some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check just to be sure?” But the transformation of our romantic lives can’t be explained by technology alone. In a short period of time, the whole culture of finding love has changed dramatically. A few decades ago, people would find a decent person who lived in their neighborhood. Their families would meet and, after deciding neither party seemed like a murderer, they would get married and soon have a kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today, people marry later than ever and spend years of their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a soul mate. For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern Romance, the book, he decided he needed to take things to another level. He teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages. They enlisted the world’s leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry Turkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike any social science or humor book we’ve seen before. In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science to give us an unforgettable tour of our new romantic world.

Download or read book The Love Songs of W E B Du Bois written by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB SELECTION WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT NOVEL • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION • A FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION • SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE • A NOMINEE FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD A New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year • A Time Must-Read Book of the Year • A Washington Post 10 Best Books of the Year • A Oprah Daily Top 20 Books of the Year • A People 10 Best Books of the Year • A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year • A BookPage Best Fiction Book of the Year • A Booklist 10 Best First Novels of the Year • A Kirkus 100 Best Novels of the Year • An Atlanta Journal-Constitution 10 Best Southern Books of the Year • A Parade Pick • A Chicago Public Library Top 10 Best Books of the Year • A KCRW Top 10 Books of the Year An Instant Washington Post, USA Today, and Indie Bestseller "Epic…. I was just enraptured by the lineage and the story of this modern African-American family…. A combination of historical and modern story—I’ve never read anything quite like it. It just consumed me." —Oprah Winfrey, Oprah Book Club Pick An Indie Next Pick • A New York Times Book Everyone Will Be Talking About • A People 5 Best Books of the Summer • A Good Morning America 15 Summer Book Club Picks • An Essence Best Book of the Summer • A Washington Post 10 Books of the Month • A CNN Best Book of the Month • A Time 11 Best Books of the Month • A Ms. Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A BookPage Writer to Watch • A USA Today Book Not to Miss • A Chicago Tribune Summer Must-Read • An Observer Best Summer Book • A Millions Most Anticipated Book • A Ms. Book of the Month • A Well-Read Black Girl Book Club Pick • A BiblioLifestyle Most Anticipated Literary Book of the Summer • A Deep South Best Book of the Summer • Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award The 2020 NAACP Image Award-winning poet makes her fiction debut with this National Book Award-longlisted, magisterial epic—an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer—that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era. The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders. Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead. To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.