WHERE I'M FROM

Walden offers recollections of and lessons garnered from eight months of backpacking solo around the globe.

The author, a self-reliant Black woman, was looking ahead toward her 30th birthday. Raised in Jamaica, Queens, and Hempstead, Long Island, by a single mother and her grandparents, she had been an excellent student—Walden attended Georgetown University and the University of Virginia, propelling herself well past the deprivations of her impoverished childhood. In 2009, while working as a city planner in Charlottesville, Virginia, she was prompted to plan a special adventure after hearing a friend’s suggestion: a trip around the world. The author scrimped, saved, and embarked on a campaign to raise funds through a website she named “The Poetic Justice World Tour.” Walden’s goal was to accomplish more than sightseeing: “I wanted the trip to include service learning…I wanted to connect with real people and experience the joys and challenges the world had to offer.” She would use her talents for storytelling through poetry to connect with the people she met. Working from a template for creating “Where I’m From” fill-in-the-blank poems, she began writing questions to ask the people she encountered on her journey, allowing them to create spoken poetry together; the intriguing format opened interviewees to consider the critical elements that defined their lives. Working with an international program that arranged short-term volunteer initiatives, the author created an itinerary that would bring her to five continents and 17 countries over eight months. Walden is a meticulous note-taker and blogger; her memoir is a combination of a vividly detailed travelogue, social commentary, and chronicle of an emotional journey that would change the trajectory of her life. The author deftly weaves the details of her own origin story into the stories of the people, places, and unique cultures she encountered on her extraordinary journey. Walden candidly describes the challenges and dangers of traveling alone as a woman, and the experience of being Black in a variety of contexts; while in Kenya, her Blackness was an asset that accorded her special privileges, but in South Africa, she felt crushed by the disparity among the races.

Engaging, informative, and thought-provoking.