Four classic Black travel books to take with you on your next trip
Avid travelers may long for the open road on the stretches of time in between travel junkets. The energy of new discovery, finding far flung companions, and uncovering moving vistas can be reveled in vicariously through the pages of a book. Between essay collections, tales of conquering the wilderness and more, these books capture the essence of Black travel.
All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes
A testament to the multiplicitous nature of the African American experience, Maya Angelou’s fifth installment in her autobiographical series chronicles the time she spent living in Ghana in her early 30s. Her struggles with motherhood as her son becomes an adult, her growing dissatisfaction with aspects of the civil rights movement and her own personal search for self discovery all play out against a backdrop of cultural questioning reconnection, with name brand historical figures like Malcolm X showing up in supporting roles.
A Stranger in the Village
Assembling over 200 years of Black travel history into a single essay collection, this book spans continents and political commitments in the various erudite perspectives it offers. Poetic social commentary offered by the likes of Claude McKay and Audre Lorde is given a Russian scope while others like Gwendolyn Brooks and W.E.B. DuBois offer their attention to different countries in Africa. Names like Booker T Washington, June Jordan, and Ntozake Shange, amongst others, round out the globetrotting list of contributors that make this paperback the ultimate Black traveler’s companion.
Tell My Horse
Zora Neale Hurston, who trained as an anthropologist at both Barnard and Columbia universities, captures in a 1938 travelogue her journey to the island nations of Jamaica and Haiti where she practices as an initiate of voodoo religious traditions. This engaged perspective brings readers into the fullness of her experience, shining a light into cultural practices that are often maligned and misunderstood in mainstream American society.
Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun
Sequestered deep in the forests of Thailand, Faith Adiele, a Black American woman with her sights set on freedom, finds herself in a convent of a religion to which she had never adhered. The journey she takes as she undergoes the intensive process, one that involves days without speaking, a severely reduced diet and braving the natural elements, shines a light onto the inner facets of the human experience. As she takes the stereotypical path, she also faces the fraught tension between nonviolence and militant activism playing out against the backdrop back home.
This story was originally published September 2, 2022 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Four classic Black travel books to take with you on your next trip."