Race, Identity, and Privilege from the US to the Congo

This diaspora-encompassing memoir by a distinguished scholar in literature and culture shows how the strong family of her youth guided her into years of travel, encounter, and leadership in building the formidable network of Black scholars. Beautifully written, its nuanced tales of hairstyles, gender, family, and identity are profoundly entertaining.

-- Patrick Manning, University of Pittsburgh

Brenda F. Berrian takes us on the many journeys that shaped her development. She begins with capturing her interactions as a young person in a new culture with her family in the Congo in 1961. Returning to the states, she negotiates the Civil Rights movement. Future journeys include European, African nations, and the Caribbean as she forges a career in racially different spaces. In her writing she shares reactions as a teen, but revisits experiences as she gains knowledge. Sometimes an insider, but often an outsider, she witnesses systemic racism around the globe and the depth of humanity as people care for each other.

-- Elizabeth Higginbotham, University of Delaware, author of Too Much to Ask: Black Women in the Era of Integration

Berrian presents a richly textured and thought-provoking perspective of race and identity and how it continues to be evolved through her many journeys across the African continent. Through her sweeping synthesis of her South African travels, which focus on her personal experiences of racial discrimination, her Fort Hare journey, her exposure to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, her understanding of the Spirit of Ubuntu and the challenges presented, she provides a clear grasp of political and social history. While this allows for astonishing conclusions, it adds an impressive and exciting dimension to scholarship on apartheid and race with illuminating assumptions.

-- Narissa Ramdhani, Honorary Consul: Republic of Chile in South Africa

Part autobiography, part chronicle, Brenda Berrian’s Race, Identity, and Privilege from the US to the Congo is the compelling story of a life lived across three continents and shaped by the tumultuous decades of protest against Jim Crow, mobilizations for civil rights and equality, and the equally turbulent struggles of Africa's decolonizing project. Berrian narrates her growing, nuanced sense of identity as a Black woman—daughter, sister, friend, student, scholar, teacher. It is a story of strength and resilience, wisdom and pain, humor and love.

-- Eileen Julien, Indiana Univer