Even by Berlin standards, the journalist and novelist Jennifer Neal has led an impressively peripatetic existence. In her new memoir, she marshals her abilities in both professions to present a critical literary portrait of the places that have marked her adult life: Kudamatsu, Japan; Chicago, USA; Melbourne, Australia – and of course, Berlin.
These reminiscences open up into discussions of the difficulties she faced in each place as a Black woman, interwoven with impressively-researched histories of Blackness, racism and the various solidarities that the marginalised manage to form. The book began as Neal’s column for US outlet The Root, interviewing Black people about their experiences in adopted lands worldwide, and that curiosity about the diversity of Black experience suffuses the book.
Especially touching is the relationship Neal sketches between herself and her late grandfather, whose life she finds both reassuringly familiar and sadly out of reach. In his last letter to her, his globetrotting granddaughter, he wrote the words: “Be happy.”
- Out now from Catapult.
