Amazon.com Review
Representing a people that first "traveled" to the New World via slavery, this splendid collection of 47 entries reveals a complex and nonmonolithic African American world-view ranging from U.S. frontier exploration to Pan-Africanism.
Alongside James Baldwin, W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and Claude McKay writing about Paris, Mexico, Africa, and Russia, author Ntozake Shange muses on the unifying presence of the African American Motown sound in Nicaragua, and 19th-century leader Booker T. Washington offers astute analysis of northern Italian prejudice against its southern citizens. In Martin Luther King Jr.'s description of his 1959 pilgrimage to India, he writes, "We were looked upon as brothers with the color of our skins as something of an asset...," whereas in journalist Carl T. Rowan's 1956 visit, forecasting today's India- Pakistan nuclear conflict, the mood is not so optimistic: "Here was an inverse racism as much a threat to peace ... as the kind of racism I suffered."
Although the inclusion of the various journals by Africans who survived the Middle Passage would have been welcome, this book is a long-overdue addition to the genre of travel writing, showing once and for all that African Americans are, and have always been, a global people. --Eugene Holley Jr.
From Publishers Weekly
This exceptionally rich collection brings together memoirs, excerpts from books and diaries, pamphlets, personal letters and lectures written by African Americans during the 19th and 20th centuries about their travels. Griffin, an assistant professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, and Fish, an assistant professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, include pieces by missionaries (Zilpha Shaw), explorers (Matthew Henson), authors (James Baldwin), activists (Angela Davis) and statesmen (Ralph J. Bunche) who voyage to such places as Africa, Russia, the Caribbean and India. The well-chosen selections depict journeys undertaken for various reasons. Of special interest are Robert Campbell's 1859 analysis of African slavery, Martin Luther King Jr.'s impressions of India and poet June Jordan's visit to the Bahamas, where she encountered the exploitation of the black staff at the hotel where she stayed.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
