This book was interesting, but a difficult read for me. The language, while beautiful, is often rather archaic. Souls of Black Folk is one of the first sociological studies done on the "Negro situation" in the United States - and being written in the time directly after the Civil War (i.e. Reconstruction period) it is contemporaneous to one of the most difficult periods to be black in the United States. All that being said, the book was pretty fascinating.

Out of the fourteen essays that comprise this book only one was fictional, and that one (The Coming of John) was a parable of being an educated black man in a small Southern town. W.E.B. DuBois himself was a highly educated Northerner, and one feels the alienation that he must have felt when seeing the "bone of [his] bone and flesh of [his] flesh" in the South. The inability to relate and frustration is a key part of the book, and the lamentation of the situation stings even now.

From a historical standpoint, the book is important and thus something that should be read. The book is not a pleasurable read, however, and is one that I had trouble getting through. I respect it, but I don't think I can honestly say that I liked it.