Customer Reviews

Migrations of the Heart: An Autobiography

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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!

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.

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.

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