Author Description

"Maya Angelou tells the story of arriving in Africa a stranger but leaving claimed as a Bambara. Evelyn C. White writes about finding new pride in being black after visiting Egypt. Opal Palmer Adisa evokes the sights, sounds, and aromas of urban Chana where she traveled to meet her lifelong pen pal. Lucinda Roy brings alive the year she spent teaching girls in Sierra Leone and tells how the villagers' friendship overcame her loneliness for home." "Alice Walker offers a quiet meditation on her "spiritual inertia" in Bali and how the beauty of the country finally stirred her imagination. Audre Lorde captures her experience of being refused entry to the British Virgin Islands because of her dreadlocks. Gwendolyn Brooks recounts the camaraderie and tensions of a trip to Russia with a group of American writers. Gloria Wade-Gayles explores the complexities of being both an American and a woman of color as a paying guest in a Mexican home." "Colleen J. McElroy sets out to find the descendants of blacks abandoned in the former Yugoslavia by Turkish slave traders in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. Linda Villarosa travels to El Carmen, Peru, for the four-day Christmas celebration that combines Peruvian and African cultures. Barbara Chase-Riboud shows us her Paris. Rachel Christmas Derrick takes us on a sun-drenched tour of one of her favorite Caribbean islands. Jill Nelson brings us along on her annual homecoming to the Martha's Vineyard summer community formed by blacks in the early part of the century." --Book Jacket.