AROUND THE WORLD IN BLACK & WHITE

In this memoir, a white woman travels to various countries with her Black husband, exposing her to the realities of racial profiling and her own privilege.

In 2018 Best was faced with a dilemma: Should she travel the world with her spouse and their newborn, or should they wait for a more opportune time that might never come? The author, a white Canadian of European descent, and her husband, Roland, a Black Canadian of Caribbean descent, chose to travel, and they went to various locales in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the United States over the course of a full year, meeting with friends and family members along the way. The author uses her memoir, in part, as a platform to express how she became aware of racial prejudice as she witnessed her husband become the target of racial profiling. She also found that their infant son’s skin color and hair texture was a source of wonder to many people they met. When Best describes how Roland was openly mocked by a group of young people in Cambodia, readers may be shocked that such a thing could occur in the modern world. The author also makes it clear that witnessing such an event firsthand was a watershed moment for her, and her description of her reaction warrants readers’ attention. Indeed, the sections of the book that tackle race-related issues are the most compelling, and the fact that the book’s title and subtitle center that topic may raise readers’ expectations that they will make up the majority of the book. However, it’s centered more on the adventurous, outgoing author and how approached her roles as a mother and a spouse under the unusual circumstances of the trip; Best notes that a friend inspired her to consider documenting their travels by saying, “It’s not every day you meet someone who treks across the world with a newborn. Plus, everything Roland has experienced.”

An often engaging remembrance of a family’s globe-hopping dream trip, although readers may wish that it were more thematically focused.