No Place Like Home Book

Shortly before his trip to the American South, Guardian reporter Gary Younge asked an American journalist what kind of reaction he could expect as a black Briton. "Well, when they hear your accent, white Americans will usually add twenty points to your IQ," said the journalist, "But when they see your face, they most definitely won't." That advice might convince some to stay at home, but Younge, the son of a strong- willed nurse from Barbados, took a different approach. He travelled to the heartland of American racial tensions-- along the route taken by the Freedom Riders in 1961 as they challenged the practice of racial segregation. The Freedom Riders were a racially mixed group of civil rights workers who travelled by bus from Washington DC to New Orleans, visiting travel facilities like wash rooms and lunch counters where racial segregation, though illegal, was still practised. Some facilities prepared for their arrival by removing signs of segregation; in other places, like Rock Hill, South Carolina, they experienced violence. Younge speaks with civil rights activists, visits schools, universities and military establishments, and tracks down long-lost cousins. As a Briton visiting America he is warmly greeted by nearly everyone (Greyhound bus employees are the exception)-- though racial tensions are still evident. In Richmond, Virginia, there is a street full of monuments to southern civil war leaders who supported slavery. Members of a rural white Baptist church are shocked to see Younge in their congregation. Younge finds himself grappling with his own identity. Is he black, or British, or both? English people, he writes, don't like to talk about race. "Mention racial slights you have encountered, and they will accuse you of being chippy." Americans, on the other hand, "are as upfront about race as they are about their salaries or visits to their therapists." In No Place Like Home Younge adopts an American frankness as he counterpoints his journey through the American South with his childhood and experiences of racism in Britain in this lucid and engaging travel memoir. --Tamsin ToddRead More