Guidebook to Relative Strangers Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History [Paperback]

As a working mother and poet-lecturer, Camille Dungys livelihood depended on travel. She crisscrossed America and beyond with her daughter in tow, history shadowing their steps, always intensely aware of how they were perceived, not just as mother and child but as black women. From the San Francisco of settlers dreams to the slave-trading ports of Ghana, from snow-white Maine to a festive yet threatening bonfire in the Virginia pinewoods, Dungy finds fear and trauma but also mercy, kindness, and community. Penetrating and generous, this is an essential guide for a troubled land.?Part memoir, part travelogue, part parental guide, this book is?a stunningly beautiful love letter from a mother to her daughter to help her daughter embrace the world she lives in, to introduce her to her ancestors, and prepare her for the future.Calm, lucid, and sturdy, Dungys account stares down the effects and unevenly distributed burdens of our shared past and present with clear eyes, full heart, and the kind of dedication to fact, feeling, and history that we truly need now, as ever.Dungy's prose is rich, fertile, astoundingly beautiful, and also singular?and exacting. What better a voice to explore the rapture of motherhood, the fraught vulnerability of living in a black body, and the beautiful intimacy that can arise between near strangers??Evokes the blend of horror, mortality, and terrible tenderness [Dungy] has previously captured in her poetry.If youve been searching for an[Dungy] writes not as an authority, but as a fellow traveler, reminding us that motherhood will crack open your heart, clutter your brain, confound your steps and explode your consciousness.In stirring and insightful prose, the wonder of our shared journey is spelled out on these pages. The music from Camille Dungys pen is as intimate as the blues and as epic as a symphony.Some essay collections challenge your intellect, others break open your heart, a few grant a new way of seeing, and occasilÓ