Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005

From the book jacket:

“Middle Passages examines more than two centuries of African American journeys to Africa, from the arrival of the first colonists in Sierra Leone and Liberia to the heritage tourism of our own time. The book’s subjects include many of the central figures in American intellectural, political, and artistic life–Martin Delany, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, and Maya Angelou, to name only a few–as well as men and women whose names have been lost to history. Together, the journeys recounted here–journeys replete with irony and tragedy yet limned with hope and inspiration—illuminate African Americans’ ever evolving relationship with Africa and, by extension, their complex, often painful relationship to the United States.”

Middle Passages is a meaty book, one that begs to be read slowly, thought about, and studied. Yet, even with its scope and depth, it reads as if floating down a river….a river filled with feelings as well as thoughts and insights. There is much to admire in and learn from Middle Passages.