At Home Abroad is a stunning autobiography of Nancy
Henderson-James's youth in Africa. Heart-wrenching is her uprooting
at age 15 when the war for independence began, from Angola, whose
natural world, people, customs, languages she so loved. Nancy
bravely and articulately recounts a true saga of personal loss and
bereavement. But out of the crucible of conflicts between herself
and her parents, the Africa she loved and the America from which
she felt estranged, comes crystalline strength, confidence, humor,
and self-knowledge. Her journey to wholeness, with its exquisite
analysis and detail, enlightens us, so that we, too, see our own
lives with new understanding and compassion and recognize better
our place in the 21st century as citizens of the world.
Judy Hogan, Founding Editor of Carolina Wren Press, 1976-91.
In this intimate and detailed autobiography, Nancy Henderson-James
throws open the door on a room in the history of religion that has
been locked and double-bolted: the life of a child of Christian
missionaries in the 1950's in Africa. It is not another story of
the children of a crazy preacher or an abusive father. Rather it is
a story of the loneliness of a daughter of liberal Protestant
missionaries who do (almost) everything right professionally, but
are absent in crucial ways to the lives of their children. "I was
dancing between complex alliances of race, nationality, gender and
religion." Readers will wince at a wastebasket made from an
elephant's foot, at a child going to a male teacher to tell a
secret that belongs to a parent, at images of spacious homes and
multiple servants in a village of poor dwellings - ." . . my life
in white colonial Angola . . .in the midst of a system fast coming
apart." But At Home Abroad is also the story of a young woman
finding her own way to survival, to freedom, and to her own
spiritual path.
Pat Schneider, author: Writing Alone and With Others, Oxford
University Press, 2003
Nancy Henderson-James has written a tremendous book. Her writing
skillfully weaves the threads of a beautiful exotic setting, the
discoveries and tensions of adolescence, the powerful shaping
attachment to a very particular place, and the void of absence. I
highly recommend her memoir to anyone exploring the mysterious
terrain of childhood, the challenge of straddling vastly different
worlds, or the way loss adds depth as well as pain to a thoughtful
life.
Mary Edwards Wertsch, author of Military Brats: Legacies of
Childhood Inside the Fortress
Henderson-James has written a wonderfully constructed memoir
filled with honesty and tenderness describing an intriguing
childhood life compelling her to straddle different cultures. And
through its elegant prose, resonant images and informative
commentaries, this gem of a book effectively presents a thoroughly
engrossing and moving account of experiences that most of us would
otherwise know very little about.
Norm Goldman, Publisher and Editor, bookpleasures.com
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