Exploring deep-rooted understandings of race and gender and describing how differently their "Americanness" resonates in both writers' works, What Else But Love? considers the legacy of slavery in a variety of ways, from the meaning of mammies and mothers to the question of black manhood.

Weinstein investigates the stories blacks and whites, men and women, tell about each other through the work of two quintessential American novelists: William Faulkner and and Toni Morrison. Exploring deep-rooted understandings of race and gender and describing how differently their "Americanness" resonates in both writers' works, What Else But Love? considers the legacy of slavery in a variety of ways, from the meaning of mammies and mothers to the question of black manhood.