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No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the American South
In 1997 Gary Younge explored the American South by retracing the route of the original Freedom Riders of the 1960s. His road trip was a remarkable socio-cultural adventure for an outsider. He was British, journalistically curious, and black.
As he traveled by Greyhound bus through the former Confederate states, he experienced an awakening. He felt culturally tied to this strange yet familiar place. Though a Briton by birth and the child of emigrants from Barbados, he felt culturally alien in his native land. In Dixie, however, he met African Americans whose racial distinctiveness was similar to his own. To local blacks he looked like a brother, while sounding intriguingly foreign. As he assessed their political rise in the South, he noted too how African American tradition seemed static and unchanged. It was a refreshing whiff of “home.”
Awakened to his own identity as a black in a predominantly white society and absorbed by a sense of southern myth and racial history, he produced this account, a blend of travel writing, historical research, wit, and social commentary. His probing examination of the Southland gives fresh perspective on race relations in America.
Originally published in England, No Place Like Home is “more than a piece of travel writing,” praised the London Evening Standard , “[but] a compelling exploration of racial identity and the problems of growing up clever, black, and angry in small-town Stevenage. . . . Younge is a fine journalist―thoroughgoing, clear-minded, and meticulous, and he writes in a measured, lucid prose. . . . Next, please take a trip around the UK, Gary Younge, and write about it. Your country needs you.”
As he traveled by Greyhound bus through the former Confederate states, he experienced an awakening. He felt culturally tied to this strange yet familiar place. Though a Briton by birth and the child of emigrants from Barbados, he felt culturally alien in his native land. In Dixie, however, he met African Americans whose racial distinctiveness was similar to his own. To local blacks he looked like a brother, while sounding intriguingly foreign. As he assessed their political rise in the South, he noted too how African American tradition seemed static and unchanged. It was a refreshing whiff of “home.”
Awakened to his own identity as a black in a predominantly white society and absorbed by a sense of southern myth and racial history, he produced this account, a blend of travel writing, historical research, wit, and social commentary. His probing examination of the Southland gives fresh perspective on race relations in America.
Originally published in England, No Place Like Home is “more than a piece of travel writing,” praised the London Evening Standard , “[but] a compelling exploration of racial identity and the problems of growing up clever, black, and angry in small-town Stevenage. . . . Younge is a fine journalist―thoroughgoing, clear-minded, and meticulous, and he writes in a measured, lucid prose. . . . Next, please take a trip around the UK, Gary Younge, and write about it. Your country needs you.”
290 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
370 people want to read
About the author
Gary Younge
18 books180 followersGary Younge is an author, broadcaster and editor-at-large for The Guardian, based in London. He also writes a monthly column, Beneath the Radar, for the Nation magazine and is the Alfred Knobler Fellow for The Nation Institute. He has written five books: Another Day in the Death of America, A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives; The Speech, The Story Behind Martin Luther King’s Dream; Who Are We?, And Should it Matter in the 21st century; Stranger in a Strange Land, Travels in the Disunited States and No Place Like Home, A Black Briton’s Journey Through the Deep South. He has made several radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from gay marriage to Brexit.
Born in Hertfordshire to Barbadian parents, he grew up in Stevenage until he was 17 when he went to Kassala, Sudan with Project Trust to teach English in a United Nations Eritrean refugee school. On his return he attended Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh where he studied French and Russian, Translating and Interpreting.
In his final year of at Heriot Watt he was awarded a bursary from The Guardian to study journalism at City University and started working at The Guardian in 1993. In 1996 he was awarded the Laurence Stern Fellowship, which sends a young British journalist to work at the Washington Post for three months.
After several years of reporting from all over Europe, Africa, the US and the Caribbean Gary was appointed The Guardian’s US correspondent in 2003, writing first from New York and then Chicago. In 2015 he returned to London where is now The Guardian’s editor-at-large.
He has enjoyed several prizes for his journalism. In 2017 he received the James Aaronson Career Achievement Award from Hunter College, City University of New York. In 2016 he won the Comment Piece of the Year from The Comment Awards and the Sanford St. Martin Trust Radio Award Winner for excellence in religious reporting. In 2015 he was awarded Foreign Commentator of the Year by The Comment Awards and the David Nyhan Prize for political journalism from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. “It’s the powerless on whose behalf he writes,” said the Center’s director. In 2009 he won the James Cameron award for the “combined moral vision and professional integrity” of his coverage of the Obama campaign. From 2001 to 2003 he won Best Newspaper Journalist in Britain’s Ethnic Minority Media Awards three years in a row.
His books have also won many awards. In 2017 Another Day in the Death of America won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize from Columbia Journalism School and Nieman Foundation, was shortlisted for the Helen Berenstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism from New York Public Library and The Jhalak prize and was longlisted for The Orwell Prize for Books and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non Fiction from American Library Association. Who Are We? was shortlisted for the Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize. No Place Like Home was shortlisted for The Guardian’s first book award.
He has also enjoyed considerable acclaim from academia. Currently a visiting professor at London South Bank University, he was appointed the Belle Zeller Visiting Professor for Public Policy and Social Administration at Brooklyn College (CUNY) from 2009-2011. in 2016 he was made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and in 2007 he was awarded Honorary Doctorates by both his alma mater, Heriot Watt University, and London South Bank University.
He lives in London with his wife and two children.
Born in Hertfordshire to Barbadian parents, he grew up in Stevenage until he was 17 when he went to Kassala, Sudan with Project Trust to teach English in a United Nations Eritrean refugee school. On his return he attended Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh where he studied French and Russian, Translating and Interpreting.
In his final year of at Heriot Watt he was awarded a bursary from The Guardian to study journalism at City University and started working at The Guardian in 1993. In 1996 he was awarded the Laurence Stern Fellowship, which sends a young British journalist to work at the Washington Post for three months.
After several years of reporting from all over Europe, Africa, the US and the Caribbean Gary was appointed The Guardian’s US correspondent in 2003, writing first from New York and then Chicago. In 2015 he returned to London where is now The Guardian’s editor-at-large.
He has enjoyed several prizes for his journalism. In 2017 he received the James Aaronson Career Achievement Award from Hunter College, City University of New York. In 2016 he won the Comment Piece of the Year from The Comment Awards and the Sanford St. Martin Trust Radio Award Winner for excellence in religious reporting. In 2015 he was awarded Foreign Commentator of the Year by The Comment Awards and the David Nyhan Prize for political journalism from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. “It’s the powerless on whose behalf he writes,” said the Center’s director. In 2009 he won the James Cameron award for the “combined moral vision and professional integrity” of his coverage of the Obama campaign. From 2001 to 2003 he won Best Newspaper Journalist in Britain’s Ethnic Minority Media Awards three years in a row.
His books have also won many awards. In 2017 Another Day in the Death of America won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize from Columbia Journalism School and Nieman Foundation, was shortlisted for the Helen Berenstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism from New York Public Library and The Jhalak prize and was longlisted for The Orwell Prize for Books and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non Fiction from American Library Association. Who Are We? was shortlisted for the Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize. No Place Like Home was shortlisted for The Guardian’s first book award.
He has also enjoyed considerable acclaim from academia. Currently a visiting professor at London South Bank University, he was appointed the Belle Zeller Visiting Professor for Public Policy and Social Administration at Brooklyn College (CUNY) from 2009-2011. in 2016 he was made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and in 2007 he was awarded Honorary Doctorates by both his alma mater, Heriot Watt University, and London South Bank University.
He lives in London with his wife and two children.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 27, 2013
This is a travelogue of a Briton, of African ancestry, through the American South. Mr. Younge is an excellent observer – we experience Greyhound buses, hotel rooms, TV and general American behaviour. This is done from many vantage points – as a foreigner, a journalist and a black man. He attends church services in both black and white congregations. There are some humorous observations, as well as frustrating ones – in comedy clubs and Greyhound buses. This should be a mandatory read for anyone romanticizing long (or even short) distance travel by bus.
Mr. Yonge speaks to several participants of the 1950’s and 1960’s Civil Rights movement. Although these interviews are not detailed they capture a wide range of characters. I would venture to say that Mr. Yonge is more comfortable describing his own experiences in the American southern landscape as he wanders to and fro between anywhere and somewhere. At one stage in Mississippi he stands alone in the evening by the Tallahatchie contemplating the sordid history of the river and the state. He visits a Civil Rights museum in Birmingham which is at least an attempt to acknowledge the history of the South. Only by understanding and truth can reconciliation take hold.
Mr. Yonge speaks to several participants of the 1950’s and 1960’s Civil Rights movement. Although these interviews are not detailed they capture a wide range of characters. I would venture to say that Mr. Yonge is more comfortable describing his own experiences in the American southern landscape as he wanders to and fro between anywhere and somewhere. At one stage in Mississippi he stands alone in the evening by the Tallahatchie contemplating the sordid history of the river and the state. He visits a Civil Rights museum in Birmingham which is at least an attempt to acknowledge the history of the South. Only by understanding and truth can reconciliation take hold.
May 9, 2022
this was so so good and so eye opening too.
January 13, 2015
This book is much more than a travelogue. It's an extremely well articulated, sometimes humorous, and deeply engrossing social commentary. As I read, I felt nostalgic for the England I grew up in and was very interested in the cultural differences of how England and America approach differences in race. His account is deeply interesting and his observations of the human condition are astute. Gary Younge is an author I will seek out in further reading adventures.
February 14, 2021
Gary Younge’s observations on the United States are fascinating. For many years he was The Guardian’s Washington correspondent, and has written on Martin Luther King’s famous “ I Have a Dream” speech; on the murder victims on one day in the USA, giving voice to the families behind the grim statistics; and on the differences faces of race and racism in the USA and the UK. Younge was born and bred in a London suburb, and his parents were immigrants from Barbados. Younge struggles with his identity: he is reluctant to call himself “an Englishman” or a “ Briton”. In “No Place Like Home”, his first book, he retraces the steps of the Freedom Riders who, in 1961, rode through the South and challenged the Jim Crow laws on buses and bus terminals. A group of mixed racial origin, they disobeyed the rules, with the African-Americans using facility reserved for “ whites”, and vice versa. The ride was met with sullen resistance in Virginia and the Carolinas, then outright violence in Alabama and Mississippi. Younge interviews many of the participants from those days, and reflects on his own experiences with race. He is keenly aware that he is an odd bird in the American South, with his distinct British accent creating numerous moments of confusion. The South he visits is still scarred by the past, and he admits to being fearful the night he stood on the bridge over the Tallahatchie Bridge, near where Emmett Till’s tortured body was recovered after he was lynched. This is a thoughtful and original look at the past and present ( circa 1997) American South, where the
“ past isn’t passed”.
“ past isn’t passed”.
July 2, 2024
I enjoy a good travelogue and this was one of them. Gary Younge retraces the route of the Freedom Riders, starting off in Washington DC and going through Virginia, the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi and ending in New Orleans.
But it was more than a travelogue. This was a black man from Britain of Caribbean roots travelling to a country where race is much more at the forefront of everyday life in the way people talk about it, especially compared to Britain. In the US and especially the South, there's no escaping it whether past or present. Younge's observations about the people around him and towns he visited along the way were enjoyable, astute and at times disheartening. There were also many interviews with Civil Rights era participants, some of which who were on those buses, facing down the dogs and hate-filled citizens and police during the 50's and 60's.
Good book.
But it was more than a travelogue. This was a black man from Britain of Caribbean roots travelling to a country where race is much more at the forefront of everyday life in the way people talk about it, especially compared to Britain. In the US and especially the South, there's no escaping it whether past or present. Younge's observations about the people around him and towns he visited along the way were enjoyable, astute and at times disheartening. There were also many interviews with Civil Rights era participants, some of which who were on those buses, facing down the dogs and hate-filled citizens and police during the 50's and 60's.
Good book.
August 12, 2023
I first read this book many years ago and again last year, and each time it has resonated with me. As a memoir of the author's young adult life in Britain and the US in the 1980s, it's inevitably an exploration of race in both countries. Growing up in predominantly white Stevenage (to Barbadian parents) a new town founded in the late 1940s, Younge's lifestory detracts from those often associated with other Black British Caribbean male populations of the inner cities. Gary Younge once spoke to me about the Black success stories to have come out of Stevenage, ascribing these to the fact that as a town in the making, few of its residents felt that it belonged to them.
The pull of America is one that many Black Britons of his generation can relate to. What keeps you reading is not only he new insights into life as an African American versus life as a Black Briton, but also the light humour which on one occasion relays some of Younge's frustrations as a backpacker. This is an interesting read for anyone who wants to read a familiar story with fresh eyes.
The pull of America is one that many Black Britons of his generation can relate to. What keeps you reading is not only he new insights into life as an African American versus life as a Black Briton, but also the light humour which on one occasion relays some of Younge's frustrations as a backpacker. This is an interesting read for anyone who wants to read a familiar story with fresh eyes.
March 23, 2018
Very interesting journey. Dragged a little in places, though I like his personal anecdotes and descriptions of people he met. Important evidence of the complexity and difference of race relations in both US and UK. He's a great mind, writer.
May 21, 2018
Thoughtful, on the road book. Dragged a bit.
July 18, 2022
A lovely and moving read by a national treasure
October 8, 2007
Written by the partner of a North Star Board member, this book chronicles the journey of a Black Briton following the path of the Freedom Riders. It's hilarious and thought-provoking and inspiring.
November 4, 2010
Thank you Sara. Fantastic.
September 3, 2016
This was part of the "common reader" program piloted at TSU in 2010-2011.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews