Beyond the Shores
A History of African Americans Abroad
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • An award-winning author charts the poignant global journeys of African Americans as she explores her own transatlantic family odyssey in Beyond the Shores, a powerful history of living abroad while Black.
“By exploring the life of Black expats, creatives, and activists, Beyond the Shores enhances the stories of migration to reveal how race is lived in the United States and abroad.”—Marcia Chatelain, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of South Side Girls
Part historical exploration, part travel memoir, Beyond the Shores reveals poignant histories of a diverse group of African Americans who have left the United States over the course of the past century. Together, the interwoven stories highlight African Americans’ complicated relationship to the United States and the world at large.
Beyond the Shores is not just about where African Americans stayed or where they ate when they traveled but also about why they left in the first place and how they were treated once they reached their destinations. Drawing on years of research, Dr. Tamara J. Walker chronicles their experiences in atmospheric detail, taking readers from well-known capital cities to more unusual destinations like Yangiyul, Uzbekistan, and Kabondo, Kenya. She follows Florence Mills, the would-be Josephine Baker of her day, in Paris, and Richard Wright, the author turned actor and filmmaker, in Buenos Aires. Throughout Beyond the Shores, she relays tender stories of adventurous travelers, including a group of gifted Black crop scientists in the 1930s, a housewife searching for purpose in the 1950s, a Peace Corps volunteer discovering his identity in the 1970s, and her own grandfather, who, after losing his eye fighting in World War II and returning to a country that showed no signs of honoring his sacrifice, set out with his wife and children on a circuitous journey that sent them back and forth across the Atlantic. Tying these tales together is Walker’s personal account of her family’s, and her own, experiences abroad—in France, Brazil, Argentina, Austria, and beyond.
By sharing the accounts of those who escaped the racism of the United States to try their hands at life abroad, Beyond the Shores shines a light on the meaning of home and the search for a better life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this innovative survey, historian Walker (Exquisite Slaves) profiles expatriate African Americans across the 20th century. Focusing on figures like Josephine Baker and Richard Wright, Walker highlights the inspiration and freedom that Paris and other international cities gave to Black American artists. She also touches on politics, business, academia, and the military, spotlighting the many ways in which African Americans have participated in world affairs beyond America's shores. Among the profile subjects are Oliver Golden, a defector to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and Mabel Grammer, a military wife living in Germany in the 1950s who found homes for stigmatized "Brown Babies," the mixed-race children of German women and American soldiers. There are also interviews with contemporary African Americans who have lived and worked abroad, including Kim Bass, an actor on Japanese television in the 1990s, which exemplify the challenges and opportunities Black Americans in foreign countries continued to come up against through the turn of the 21st century. (When he arrived in Japan in the 1980s, Bass was sometimes initially denied entry to bars and clubs not because he was Black per se, but because of strong public sentiment against the U.S. military; bouncers wrongly stereotyped all Black Americans as soldiers.) Drawing on a vast range of sources, including archival materials and memoirs, Walker provides a rich and nuanced portrait of an understudied aspect of African American life. It's a unique contribution to American history.
