I am part of a long lineage of brave Black women writers who decided to leave home in search of adventure and themselves.
When I began researching books for my 2010 around-the-world journey—which is cataloged in my upcoming memoir, Where I’m From: A Poetic Journey Across Five Continents—I didn’t even know to look for books by Black women travelers. I didn’t know anyone who had traveled extensively, let alone while Black.
In preparation for my journey, I remember reading Eat, Pray, Love, the quintessential travel memoir at the time; The Rough Guide to First-Time Around the World to practically prepare for my journey; A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, where Donald Miller reflects on story and climbs Machu Picchu in an effort to make his life a better narrative; and Go Girl: Finding Adventure Wherever Your Travels Lead, which a friend bought me as encouragement.
Unbeknownst to me, there was another Go Girl!: The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure, an anthology edited by Elaine Lee, featuring travel stories by Black women including Maya Angelou and Audre Lorde.
At the time, I felt like an anomaly. I wasn’t sure the world wanted to hear stories about Black women searching for home, self and meaning by crossing orders.
In retrospect, the models existed then—albeit few, and I’m grateful to say there are even more now: stories that explore the interior lives of Black women across the globe, who leave home in search of adventure, spirituality, peace, healing and joy. These writers explore the world while navigating questions of race, identity, belonging, love, home and how to build a life and a self abroad.
Over the years, I’ve immersed myself in the stories of other Black women, not only as literary models, but as encouragement that the world might actually want to hear my story, my lessons and my truth. These books reminded me I am part of a long lineage of brave Black women who decided to leave home in search of adventure and themselves. The following memoirs, anthologies and novels explore movement across borders while grappling with history, race, identity, belonging, faith, joy and ultimately, home.
Lived Truths
All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes
By Maya Angelou
In this memoir, Maya Angelou travels to Ghana in the 1960s searching for a sense of home in Africa. What she finds instead are questions around identity, exile and returning to a place that is both familiar and foreign. Like many of Angelou’s autobiographical works, it is a joy to witness this continuation of her transformation from young Maya into the prolific writer and political force she would become.
Go Girl!: The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure
Edited by Elaine Lee
This is the book I wish I had for my 2010 journey.
Published in 1998 and edited by Elaine Lee, Go Girl! is one of the first major travel anthologies written by and for Black women. It’s the OG of Black women’s travel books. Featuring 52 essays, the collection explores travel, identity, spirituality, racism, belonging and discovery across the globe long before Black travel became mainstream.
Go Girl 2, the second edition, was just as expansive and became a constant companion on my 2024 remote working journey across the African diaspora. And this year, I was honestly a bit starstruck that Lee not only read my memoir, but generously blurbed it, calling it “an exhilarating journey of travel, poetry, and discovery across five continents.”
Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun
By Faith Adiele
Faith Adiele chronicles her journey to Thailand to become the country’s first Black Buddhist nun. Blending spirituality, coming of age and cultural reflection, the memoir explores race, faith, identity and a search for peace and purpose far from home.
I took Adiele’s “Rethinking Travel Writing” class last year and immediately went back and scrubbed my manuscript afterward. We have so much to learn from her teaching, writing and the way she moves through the world.
Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria
By Noo Saro-Wiwa
Returning to Nigeria, her father’s homeland, after growing up in England, Noo Saro-Wiwa travels across the country while grappling with complicated feelings about nationality and identity. Traversing the country, she explores Nigerian Christianity, delves into the country’s history of slavery, examines oil corruption, and ponders Nollywood. Saro-Wiwa’s love-hate relationship to Nigeria challenges simplistic ideas about home and return.
After reading her work and hearing her speak in Faith Adiele’s class last fall, I was struck by how beautifully she captures the truth and complexity of a place.
The Catch Me If You Can: One Woman’s Journey to Every Country in the World
By Jessica Nabongo
Jessica Nabongo documents her journey to become the first Black woman to visit every country in the world in this one-of-a-kind travelogue. Alongside vibrant photographs and reflections on race, womanhood and freedom, she offers a portrait of curiosity, courage and global connection.
I had the chance to sit next to Nabongo at an event at Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock residency in Senegal last fall and found her every bit as thoughtful and grounded as she is adventurous.
A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing: A Memoir Across Three Continents
By Mary-Alice Daniel
Mary-Alice Daniel’s memoir moves through the landscapes of her upbringing in Nigeria to England and eventually the United States. Against the backdrop of a migratory youth, she reckons with race, religion, cultural clashes and being caught between identities, continents and cultures. Quietly beautiful and deeply reflective, the book taught me so much about Nigeria and the emotional experience of living between worlds.
Written in the Waters: A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging
By Tara Roberts
Tara Roberts becomes a certified scuba diver and joins a group of Black divers searching for slave shipwrecks across multiple continents. Along the way, she reflects on ancestry, the history of the transatlantic slave trade and the emotional currents that continue to connect Black people across the diaspora. Roberts’ memoir is both tender and brave.
Imagined Homecomings
Homegoing
By Yaa Gyasi
Spanning generations and continents, Homegoing follows the descendants of two Ghanaian sisters separated by slavery. Moving between West Africa and the United States, Yaa Gyasi explores history, migration and the centuries-long search for identity and home.
This novel both deeply shaped my thinking around return and belonging and feels spiritually connected to the questions I explored while standing at the Doors of No Return in Senegal and Ghana. It’s powerful and one of my favorite explorations of diasporic homecoming.
Americanah
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Americanah tells the story of Ifemelu, a Nigerian woman who immigrates to the United States and later returns home. Through love, movement across continents and cultural observation, the novel explores race, identity and the complicated process of becoming yourself across borders. It remains one of my favorite novels because of the precision and beauty with which Adichie captures race, womanhood and Black identity in America. It reminds me that once you cross cultures, you will never really be the same, and that’s okay.
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I am honored to share literary space with these wonderful women.
I began writing my memoir in 2014 for myself. I wanted to document what volunteering, backpacking and writing ‘Where I’m From’ poems with strangers across 15 countries and five continents taught me about life, love, humanity and ultimately myself.
In 2024, I returned to the manuscript I completed in 2017—because while the Black travel movement that barely existed when I set out in 2010 has grown into something vital and visible, much of that conversation has shifted to social media aesthetics and visuals. I wanted to add a voice that goes deeper into the transformative power of travel, and to share my story with the next generation of women interested not only in exploring far-flung places, but in exploring their inner landscapes too.
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A note from Ms. editors: We want to hear from you for The Majority, a new campaign collecting stories about how reproductive freedom has enabled readers to build the lives they want and need. Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans support reproductive healthcare access. Yet public debate overlooks the lives shaped by abortion access, contraception, IVF, miscarriage care, maternal healthcare or comprehensive sex education—countless women who chose to pursue an education, have children, not have children, protect their health and chart their own future. Add your voice and complete the sentence: “Access to reproductive choices gave me the freedom to….” Together, these stories will help show not only why reproductive freedom remains a majority value, but also what it makes possible.
