2018-06-27
An Australia-based African writer and political analyst's memoir of a peripatetic life spent moving among countries and continents.During her childhood in the 1970s, Zambia-born Msimang was "schooled in radical Africanist discourse." The daughter of refugees fighting for a free South Africa, her earliest memories centered around other exiles tied to the African National Congress. Most Zambians embraced the presence of refugees, but some deemed them "rule-breakers and layabouts." In 1981, the family moved to Kenya after Msimang's father took a job working for a United Nations agency. A few years later, they moved to Canada, where they would finally have a chance to shed their status as refugees and seek "opportunities that accompan[ied] the terrain of citizenship and belonging." But in white-dominated Ottawa, the family "stuck out" in ways they had not in either Zambia or Kenya. As one of just a few African families, they became subject to cross-cultural misunderstandings and targets of both overt and covert racism. Just as the teenage Msimang began to feel comfortable in her new environment, the family returned to Nairobi, where they lived an upper-middle-class lifestyle that separated them from ordinary Kenyans. In the early 1990s and not long after Nelson Mandela was freed from prison, Msimang was accepted to Macalester College in Minnesota. There, she became steeped in black radicalism and began a painful affair with a charming but "unemployed, and unemployable" black American that ended not long after the pair moved to California. The author returned to the newly liberated South Africa, where, to her surprise, she fell in love with and married a white Australian and eventually became one of many young blacks to feel betrayed by the dream of a more just and democratic society. Eloquent and affecting, Msimang's book explores the nature of belonging as it chronicles a perpetual outsider's quest for the meaning of home.A candidly intimate tale of a journey toward self-identity.
Msimang’s graceful memoir is one of those rare books that managed to make me less cynical about the state of literature. She was born into a family dedicated to South Africa’s liberation and the pursuit of justice. It’s an environment that fosters a particular political consciousness, one Msimang continues to negotiate as she moves from Zambia to Kenya, Canada, the United States and, finally, to South Africa. It’s a coming-of-age story for those children for whom home is marked by more than a single physical location.” —Lovia Gyarkye, The New York Times
“…a graceful memoir by Sisonke Msimang, a welcome novelty. Msimang, a South African writer and political analyst, charts an alternate course to the now-familiar conclusion that home is not always a place on a map.” —New York Times Book Review
“As a child of parents exiled by the apartheid policies of her father's South African homeland, Sisonke Msimang grew up hearing of how things would change when apartheid fell. Her beautifully written memoir describes how not only did this take much longer than her parents expected, but also how the journey deposited her in Minnesota for four years. She unflinchingly describes the good and the bad—including how the dream of South Africa has not turned out quite as she hoped.” —Minnesota Public Radio
"Eloquent and affecting, Msimang's book explores the nature of belonging as it chronicles a perpetual outsider's quest for the meaning of home. A candidly intimate tale of a journey toward self-identity." —Kirkus Reviews
"For Sisonke Msimang, a childhood in exile created a life of activism. In her first book, the memoir Always Another Country, the writer and human rights worker reflects on her youth in exile from South Africa, and the urge for social justice that the experience created." —Wall Street Journal
"Memoirs are, by definition, personal. And while Always Another Country centers around Msimang’s life, the narrative carefully widens to include historical context and family background, resulting in a powerful book that feels both intensely personal and larger than life." —Booklist
“A unique perspective on South Africa’s recent history that fundamentally tells the struggle of a deeply torn woman to comprehend a deeply torn country.” —Financial Times
“We rarely hear about the stories of the children of revolutionaries. Their perspectives not only give us another lens through the lives of their parents, but also their own regarding how they fit in the world post-struggle. South African critic and author Sisonke Msimang is one of them, and her memoir, Always Another Country, is an opening to learn of her constant search of belonging and identity. Msimang was born in exile to her South African guerrilla father and her Swazi mother. From living in places including Zambia, Kenya and Canada in her formative years to eventually return to South Africa, the Australia-based writer's worldview and political awakening has been met with comforting complexity that many of us young Africans living away from home—on the continent and in the diaspora—can relate to.” —OkayAfrica
"Always Another Country is an uncompromising examination of a life focused on a place far away.” —Minnesota Public Radio
“I felt less like I was reading a static text and more like I was having a deep, meaning-making conversation with a close friend. What I will remember most about Always Another Country is its brave intimacy. Msimang bears her soul to the reader, from her close relationship with her family to her search for home to her gradual political awakening.” —Bright Magazine
“Memoirs are, by definition, personal. And while Always Another Country centers around Msimang’s life, the narrative carefully widens to include historical context and family background, resulting in a powerful book that feels both intensely personal and larger than life.” —The Gazette
