Migrations of the Heart

In her classic memoir, distinguished author, television executive, and activist Marita Golden beautifully recounts an astounding journey to Africa and back. Marita Golden was raised in Washington, D.C., by a mother who was a cleaning woman and a father who was taxi-driver. For all their struggles, with life and each other, her parents instilled her with spirit and aspirations. Swept up in the heady Black Power movement of the sixties, Marita moved to New York to study journalism at Columbia--and fell in love with Femi Ajayi, a Nigerian architecture student.. Their passion led them to start a life together in Africa--a place Marita was eager to understand. Exhilarated by a world free of white racism, Marita quickly found work as a professor and embraced motherhood. But Femi's increasing expectations that she snap into the role of the submissive Nigerian wife were shocking and dispiriting. Her struggle to regain her footing and shape a black identity that was true to her spirit is suspenseful and inspiring, an uncommon tale of race, identity, and Africa.

Marita Golden has written both fiction and nonfiction, including Migrations of the Heart, The Edge of Heaven, A Miracle Every Day, and Saving Our Sons. She is the editor of Wild Women Don’t Wear No Blues: Black Women Writers on Love, Men and Sex and the coeditor of Gumbo: An Anthology of African American Writing and of Skin Deep: Black Women and White Women Write About Race. She is the founder and CEO of the Hurston/Wright Foundation, which supports African American writers, and lives in Maryland. Please visit Marita at www.maritagolden.com.