Customer Reviews

Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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James Campbell's wonderfully written history of African American journeys to Africa, from the late 1700s to the 1990s, explores the changing answers that black Americans have given to this question. Posed in a famous 1925 poem by Countee Cullen, this question is the flip side of another: "What is America to me?" African Americans have always had to negotiate their double identity: How much American, how much African? In this erudite but very accessible book, Campbell follows African American missionaries, expatriates, writers & journalists as they each experience some part of Africa and interpret it within their own American intellectual frameworks. He shows how different generations of black Americans saw Africa through the cultural lenses of their own eras (religious, scientific, literary) and were also influenced by the current status of blacks in the United States. Each chapter focuses on the personal stories of one or more African Americans, including 19th century missionaries & emigrants and 20th century authors & expatriates, some famous and some not: Paul Cuffe, Martin Delaney, William Henry Sheppard, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Richard Wright, Maya Angelou, and many more. In the process, he highlights many important episodes in African history, from the settlement of Sierra Leone & Liberia through the atrocities of the Congo Free State and independence in Ghana to the Rwandan genocide & Africa's First World War. Although filled with historical details, the book is never dry or dull; Campbell writes like a storyteller and focuses on individuals, supplementing his narrative with quotations from their own works. The last chapter is a study of three African American reporters (two from the Washington Post and one from the New York Times) who worked in Africa during the 1990s. Campbell's account of their divergent responses to common events shows how much his theme still resonants, especially but not only for black Americans: how one interprets America determines how one sees Africa, and vice versa.

Campbell takes a fascinating twist on the typical meaning of the term "Middle Passage" which often highlights the horrors of capture and the even more horrific ocean-crossing from Africa to America.

Instead, "Middle Passages" weaves together accounts of African Americans who crossed the Atlantic from America back to Africa. In so doing, Campbell writes a compelling narrative of the pull back home that will provide insight to readers of all races.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Spiritual Friends: A Methodology of Soul Care And Spiritual Direction, and Soul Physicians.

This book I probably would give 3 and a half stars if the amazon rating system allowed it. It is well written and engaging. My criticisms are that he tends to use 10 dollar words when 2 dollar words would have been fine. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since it expands one's vocabulary, but I found myself going to the dictionary a few more times than I would have liked.

I learned quite a few things from his book, including some I ashamedly realized I should have already known. That is another problem, since the author tends to stray into general African history quite often rather than sticking to the words of the people who visited Afica. This is somewhat unavoidable since the reader needs context, but I got the feeling the author either has or wants to write a general history book of Africa.

I reccommend this book to anyone who is interested in Afican history or on leading historical American figures of African ancestory.