Migrations of the Heart: An Autobiography [Paperback]

Marita Golden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 4, 2005

In her classic memoir, distinguished author, television executive, and activist Marita Golden beautifully recounts an astounding journey to Africa and back.

Marita Golden was raised in Washington, D.C., by a mother who was a cleaning woman and a father who was taxi-driver. For all their struggles, with life and each other, her parents instilled her with spirit and aspirations. Swept up in the heady Black Power movement of the sixties, Marita moved to New York to study journalism at Columbia--and fell in love with Femi Ajayi, a Nigerian architecture student..
Their passion led them to start a life together in Africa--a place Marita was eager to understand. Exhilarated by a world free of white racism, Marita quickly found work as a professor and embraced motherhood. But Femi's increasing expectations that she snap into the role of the submissive Nigerian wife were shocking and dispiriting. Her struggle to regain her footing and shape a black identity that was true to her spirit is suspenseful and inspiring, an uncommon tale of race, identity, and Africa.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"It is a book all women will find useful and compelling and all men who love women will find disturbing, painful, and instructive." --Alice Walker

"Golden's book reads like a lyrical and well-balanced novel, but it is all the more difficult to put down because the story is true." –Newsday

“The book is exquisitely written.” —Los Angeles Times

"A marvelous journey . . . powerful imagery. . . . Distinctly drawn characters come alive, events pulsate with energy."--The Washington Post Book World

About the Author

Marita Golden has written both fiction and nonfiction, including Migrations of the Heart, The Edge of Heaven, A Miracle Every Day, and Saving Our Sons. She is the editor of Wild Women Don’t Wear No Blues: Black Women Writers on Love, Men and Sex and the coeditor of Gumbo: An Anthology of African American Writing and of Skin Deep: Black Women and White Women Write About Race. She is the founder and CEO of the Hurston/Wright Foundation, which supports African American writers, and lives in Maryland. Please visit Marita at www.maritagolden.com.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (January 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400078318
• ISBN-13: 978-1400078318
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #817,154 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I think I came into the world called to write. I have been a passionate reader and writer since I was a child. Books and language have provided me with a way to live in the world with an enlarged sense of my possibilities. Writing has thrust my personal questions and inner dialogues into the public space. In the process I have inspired others and learned from them through my work.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is one of the best books I've ever read, September 10, 2006

By 

5pillars215 "5pillars215" (ATL, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Migrations of the Heart: An Autobiography (Paperback)

I read this book right before my first journey to Ghana. I was participating in a study abroad program, and I was advised to read some books about Ghana and West Africa before I left. I stumbled upon this book on Amazon, and I'm so glad I did. Marita Golden is a brilliant storyteller, and she is so honest. I love her writing style, and I could relate to so many of her experiences. I also love the way she relayed her precarious position as a black woman in America, as well as her anxiety about her place in African society. Her book has also helped me understand some of the cultural divides btwn Africans in Diaspora, and those on the continent. I highly reccomend her book!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written, March 14, 2011

By 

Nkadzi Lemang "Lebos" (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Migrations of the Heart: An Autobiography (Paperback)

Marian Golden is an excellent writer. I could not put this book down. As African woman, I have always been fascinated by memoirs and biographies of women who marry African men, and this did not disappoint. Despite the death of her marriage, this is an excellent narrative of a woman who loved a man, loved his country, his continent and desired to build a life with him, yet this man failed her. In following her husband to Nigeria, she echoes Ruth's words to Naomi, "Where you go, I will go, your people shall be my people..." yet her husband man was blind to see who she was, the sacrifices and commitment she had made.

Thank you Marita Golden for a beautiful, poignant, impassioned and vivid biography.

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Suprising, First Comic, Then Tragic, August 29, 2011

By 

B. Wolinsky "Ben's Reviews" (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Migrations of the Heart: An Autobiography (Paperback)

Golden moved to toured Ghana and Nigeria in the 1970's when the Black Power movement was waning. She meets a Nigerian student, moves to Africa to be with him, they get married, enjoy a moderate middle-class life in his country. But as the years pass, her American "independence" strains her relationship with her traditional husband, leading to results that I will not reveal.

I always wondered about the Black Power activists who went to live in Africa. Were they accepted? Did they stay? Was American racism replaced by some other injustice? Throughout the world, there's always a "diaspora": Jewish Americans idialize Israel, Irish Americans talk of the "Emerald Isle," Italian Americans say "yo, we're paisan." But have any of them been there? Are they accepted in the country that begot their ethnic group? Or are they seen as a perversion of a culture that's sacred?

It's a shame this book is not better known. I read an old copy from the 1980's, and it's not widely read today, which is a shame.