Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots – A TIME Must-Read Memoir of Black Identity and Heritage

by Morgan Jerkins

Between 1916 and 1970, six million black Americans left their rural homes in the South for jobs in cities in the North, West, and Midwest in a movement known as The Great Migration. But while this event transformed the complexion of America and provided black people with new economic opportunities, it also disconnected them from their roots, their land, and their sense of identity, argues Morgan Jerkins. In this fascinating and deeply personal exploration, she recreates her ancestors’ journeys across America, following the migratory routes they took from Georgia and South Carolina to Louisiana, Oklahoma, and California. 


Following in their footsteps, Jerkins seeks to understand not only her own past, but the lineage of an entire group of people who have been displaced, disenfranchised, and disrespected throughout our history. Through interviews, photos, and hundreds of pages of transcription, Jerkins braids the loose threads of her family’s oral histories, which she was able to trace back 300 years, with the insights and recollections of black people she met along the way—the tissue of black myths, customs, and blood that connect the bones of American history. 


Incisive and illuminating, Wandering in Strange Lands is a timely and enthralling look at America’s past and present, one family’s legacy, and a young black woman’s life, filtered through her sharp and curious eyes.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Race, Audiobook, Biography, Biography Memoir

304 pages, Paperback

First published August 4, 2020

About the author

Morgan Jerkins is the author of the New York Times bestseller, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America and the forthcoming Wandering In Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots.

A graduate of Princeton University and the Bennington Writing Seminars, Jerkins is the current Senior Editor at ZORA of Medium and former Associate Editor at Catapult. She teaches at Columbia University's School of the Arts and most recently was the Picador Professor at Leipzig University in Germany.

She's based in Harlem.

Reviews

[sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Reconsideration is what history is all about; history doesn’t care what you feel. I had to be OK with being uncomfortable with whatever I would find out about my family.”

Wandering in Strange Lands is a memoir mixed with cultural history and social commentary. Morgan Jerkins investigates the Great Migration while tracing back her family history. This book provided many interesting and thought provoking facts that aren’t necessarily taught at schools. However it suffered from its lack of emotional connection.

Morgan Jerkin’s personal connection with the topic meant the book had potential to be heightened in terms of emotion. However, it felt quite detached from the facts and history interspersed. I would have loved to see the two parts of the story interweave in a larger and more nuanced way.

Some aspects will definitely stick with me (such as the section about water) but not the book as a whole. At some places it felt a bit dense which made it difficult for me to stay engaged.

Overall, I found this book to be an interesting look at American history through a black lens, and undoubtedly well researched. However, due to a lack of emotional connection it felt at time more like a textbook at times than a memoir/non-fiction read.

Thank you to HarperAudio and Libro.fm for this ALC

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morgan Jerkins had heard her family’s many stories and histories throughout her life but over time she began to wonder how those tales, folk sayings, etc might relate to the reality of her background. Just who were her “people?” By tracing the Great Migration in reverse and tracking specific parts of both paternal and maternal forebears, she creates a portrait of black life in America post slavery that is likely relevant for many Black people in this country.

The author physically travels to areas from her family’s past, as close to specific sites as possible, and locates as many records as possible. She also finds local experts on the people and history. Her first destination was the Low Country of Georgia and South Carolina. And the Gullah Geechee people who have lived on coastal islands and were able to maintain many African practices. She researched the starting points for those who migrated to Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, like her mother’s family and found Georgia.

Her father was from North Carolina but tracing earlier migration patterns took Jerkins to Louisiana and to a much better understanding of Creole culture. From there she follows displaced slaves, freedmen and Indians to Oklahoma, the land at the end of the Trail of Tears. The mix of people and cultures here became a battle of sorts that is still unsettled.

Lastly, she trailed those who continued to seek a better life and headed for California. For me, this was perhaps the hardest and harshest part of the saga. Here there were few, if any, good endings, rare acquisitions of homes and properties. More often there were those who were redlined out of good neighborhoods, pushed into jobs with no future, living in Los Angeles, a city with a history of racist police.

Reading this book at this time in our country’s history feels right and powerful. The final section about Watts, South Central LA, etc, was eye opening. This was written in 2019 for publication now. What timing. While it approaches black experience through a personal filter, it also deals with general experiences. While I am white and have not had the same life experiences, I am also interested in genealogy and my forbears. I am glad I had the opportunity to read this book and learn.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

[Lilli · Rating 3 out of 5]

"No one spoke about the past—the goal was to move forward and never look back."

Morgan Jerkins, an up-and-coming young Black writer from New Jersey, didn't know the full extent of her family history. Like many Black Americans, she knew she had roots in the South and ancestors who were enslaved in this country, but she had never fully connected with those roots. Intrigued by social patterns that began with the slave trade and repeated in new ways during the Great Migration, she embarks on a nationwide journey to uncover not only her own family history but many of the untold stories of Black American history.

Jerkins ventures to Georgia and South Carolina to learn more about the Gullah-Geechee population that occupies the Lowlands of the South and has been consistently displaced and overlooked by local government agencies, before moving on to the Creole populations of Louisiana and their unique cultural history in that region. She then travels to Oklahoma to investigate the ties between Black people and Indigenous people on the Trail of Tears, an event during which many people of both races were forcibly removed from their own homelands and made to exist elsewhere. Her search for a more fully-fleshed out history of Black people in America finally concludes in Los Angeles, where many Black people relocated in hopes of new opportunities not previously available to them in other parts of the country, only to be consistently caught up in the police brutality that influenced the development of gangs initially meant to protect Black folks against corrupt law enforcement. She does all this through the lens of her own family and understanding her roots by coming to know who they were and are and what their journey has entailed.

This book definitely opened my eyes to new populations and stories in history that I did not know much about and for that I am grateful. However, I was hoping to learn more about the Great Migration itself. Not only that, but this book was for me difficult to follow, which is why this not-so-well-written review is probably reflecting that. It was very oddly structured and I think it could have been helped with another round or two of editing, or maybe some new eyes on it altogether. Maybe she could have co-written it with another Black author, I'm just not sure. The premise behind this book is really stellar, but the execution just didn't quite resonate with me. I found myself spacing out a lot while listening to it and wonder if I would have been better off physically reading it; maybe I would have better digested the information and it might have had more of an emotional impact on me, but I was left wanting.

I know the book was supposed to be a memoir and pertain directly to Morgan Jerkins' personal experience and her family, but for me this was lacking the depth—emotionally and factually—that could have taken it from passable to phenomenal. The information that was included was well-researched but awkwardly presented. I would have liked to learn more about Chicago and Detroit and other parts of the North. It just felt like pieces of the puzzle were missing. I hope to come back to this book in text sometime and see if I can maybe piece together a better review or even have a better reading experience, but for now, I'm just happy to be through with this book which felt like a task to me and hopefully on to some better material before the end of Black History Month!

[Never Without a Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid well researched book. I learned a ton. More thoughts to come.

[BookOfCinz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was seven years old when I learned that I wasn't my father's only daughter This is the line that opens Morgan Jerkins sophomore novel and sets us up for a historical look into her family tree. Morgan sets out to understand more about her family's history, where they came from, why they left and why they settle where they did. Jerkins holds nothing back, she is unafraid of learning more about her history and this was a genuine look.

I really enjoyed reading this, I feel like I can relate to Jerkin's family in a way. As someone who is always asking about my family history and is constantly met with "why you want to know" "thats how how its always been" etc it felt good to see someone win at looking into their history. I also felt like this book reignited my interest into researching more about my family.

A well researched and written book. I also learned sooo much.


One things I learned reading this book:

It is important to remember that Louisiana was not originally a part of the United States.

[Mari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not to be this person, but I'm truly processing everything this book brought me...

Review to come.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.5] This book is a personal exploration of the author's family history, using US history as a backdrop. Jerkins wanders from New Jersey to Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, Oklahoma and California touching on various parts of her background and her identity as a black woman and then moving on - sometimes rather abruptly. Overall, well researched and engaging.

[Jessica J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why hasn't this gotten more attention? It's fantastic.

[✨ jami ✨]

I'm not sure exactly how to review this book. Maybe it's because it's a memoir (more of a memoir that I expected) and I find rating memoir's uncomfortable. There were parts of this I found really engaging, and really interesting. Mostly the more personal elements, and the historical narratives. But the second half, especially when she begins talking about social constructions of race I didn't find as engaging (not because they were bad, I just thought I had read books that discussed it more effectively.

That said, I really did love parts of this, and I learnt a lot. I'm not American obviously, but I still found the subject matter and history very interesting despite that.

[Traci Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is well researched and offers lots of information that was new to me. I loved learning more about The Great Migration. The writing/craft of the book was lacking and felt very simplistic. The content was very interesting and some parts were really new to me.

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual Rating: 4.5 stars

Thanks to Libro.FM for providing me with the audiobook for this one! It's read by the author and fantastic.

Wandering in Strange Lands is part memoir/family history, part ethnography as the author traces the Great Migration back to specific Black communities in the United States. It is a fascinating, thoughtful and nuanced exploration of Blackness in America and the complexities of racism, colorism, gentrification, and labeling of groups. We travel from the Gullah Geechee being mistreated and forced off their land, to the difficult and complicated history of Creole people in Louisiana, to the treatment of Black Native Americans with lack of access to resources, and finally to the supposed promised land of California and the continuation of racialized violence and oppression there. The author takes us on a journey into the past and across the country that offers a window into a darker, untold history that is still bleeding into the present day.

How do we grapple with rising property taxes forcing people off their land and diminishing Black wealth? Or the fact that a surprisingly large number of free Black people were themselves slave owners? Or the ways in which racist policies segregated and erased Black Native people who are still facing discrimination within some Native communities, despite Indigenous Americans writ large having been greatly oppressed themselves? There are no easy answers, but this feels like an important book that is asking the right questions.

Jerkins talks about how documentation is prized in historical and geneological research, but how often this can be difficult and misleading for Black people. Hiding interracial relationships, or children born into secondary relationships, or arbitrary government policies that classify or re-classify people. She suggests there is value in stories passed down through generations, things known in local communities, but all too often those things are being lost in the modern day. Along with them, traditional forms of spirituality and belief which the author learned more about along the way.

I think this is well worth reading and considering. I did feel the final section on Los Angeles felt less structured than the others and I would have liked to see a bit more history explored there. I also would have liked to hear perspectives from Native people who are not Black, although I understand why that might have been difficult. Or more on the challenges they are facing in general today and how what she discusses here adds an additional layer of complexity. That said, I think this is definitely worthwhile reading and I look forward to seeing more from this author.

[Caleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book more than Jerkins first one. She journeys from her New Jersey home state to the Deep South and Western areas in search of family roots. I was saddened, but not surprised to hear examples like McIntosh, Georgia where tax hikes on Gulla people in an effort to take land from African descendants and pass it to colonizers or corporations (e.g. Marriott).

14 million acres were lost in Beaufort, South Carolina by Gullah families. Hilton Head Island Gullah families lost heir property due to lack of wills and clear titles to the deeds. The Great Migration also lead to forfeiture of land to colonizers.

Out West, Jerkins discussed how the Knights of the Klu Klux Klan were knowingly recruited into the LAPD.
CA blacks were discriminated against and excluded from jobs, leading to high unemployment in those communities. Rising unemployment and police brutality are ingredients for a riot. It’s amazing how history repeats itself in present day.

[Abbie | ab_reads]

Thanks to @librofm and @harperaudio for providing a free ALC of Wandering in Strange Lands by Morgan Jerkins! I learned so much from this book, it completely enraptured me and I listened to all of it in three days. In this book, Jerkins delves into the history of the Great Migration and her own personal family history in an attempt to rediscover and understand her own lineage, and the effects of the Great Migration on Black people's roots, heritage and sense of identity.
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Split up into sections, Jerkins first traces her mother's side of the family down to Georgia and South Carolina, before moving onto her father's heritage in Louisiana, then onto Oklahoma and California. She explores themes such as food, the history of water and Black people (namely the embedded trauma stemming from the Middle Passage), root magic, historic and modern-day dynamics between Native Americans and Black people, land theft, police brutality and racism and more.
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This is one of those great books where you keep pressing pause so you can go and learn more about some fact or another. I'd never heard of the Gullah Geechee people, but as Jerkins herself states, this history isn't readily available. If you're not prepared to go digging for it, then don;t expect your average history lesson to fill you in. Lack of 'official' written documentation is one of the main reasons so much Black history is fragmented and lost, as oral histories are not considered reliable sources by euro-centric standards. It was fascinating to hear about Jerkins confirming some piece of family history that had been passed down orally, which before she hadn't given much thought to.
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Did you know that gated communities and luxury resorts on Hilton Head Island are built on top of Gullah Geechee cemeteries? And descendants must apply for permission or even pay a fee to pay their respects to their ancestors? This is just one of many such strands that Jerkins explores, and she will open your eyes to certain parts of Black history which have been ignored or erased outright. Then when you're done you can go and listen to Jerkins in conversation with Traci at @thestackspod too!
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There is so much packed into these 300 pages, it's extremely rich. I think the parts in Georgia, South Carolina and Louisiana felt the most fleshed out though, Jerkins could have done with a second book to dive deeper into the other locations!

[Paris (parisperusing) · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The land is everything, and without it, our culture is in peril. We once worked the land, we bought that land, and we prospered on that land. Although I feel quite unmoored that I have no ancestral home in the South, at least the name Americus can rest on my tongue, letting me know that New Jersey is neither the beginning nor necessarily the end of my family’s story. I learned that there is always a deeper story. No matter how many times one moves away from one’s original place, somehow one will be called back, as I was.”

Morgan Jerkins makes an arduous journey back through time in her latest book, Wandering in Strange Lands. Inside, Jerkins takes readers along her sojourn into the Gullah area of Georgia and South Carolina Lowcountry, Louisiana, and Oklahoma before drawing her journey to a close in Los Angeles. Jerkins’ inquests were my introduction to the Gullah Geechee peoples — from the richness of their culture and food, many dishes of which we continue to serve today to their ancestral and spiritual ties to both land and water, revealing how our trauma and fear is as much hereditary as it is a vestige of slavery. Before now, I hadn’t considered water the bloodline of my people. I hadn’t ruminated today’s gated communities as repurposed plantations — hadn’t been told of the nightmarish stories of Five Pound Island — nor had I been told of the shape-shifting “plat-eye” monsters who lured their victims to death in our folklore.

As a child, I learned nothing of hoodoo and how what whites deemed witchcraft in the South was our peoples’ form of spiritual retribution, which could be used for protection or to curse an entire land for the bloodshed of their kin. As someone from the North, born and raised, the age-old fantasies of post-racial ideologies always confused me; the black experience is constant. And as Morgan illustrates by tracing back to the race riots in LA, no matter where you abscond to or how far you stray, we are tethered to our past, and our roots — like our people, like the land — will stay with us wherever we go.

[Laura Sackton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an entirely different animal from Jerkins's first book, THIS WILL BE MY UNDOING. Coming into it expecting the same kind of writing might be disappointing to readers; I wish I hadn't had the ghost of that book hanging over me as I read this one. In THIS WILL BE MY UNDOING, Jerkins made herself vulnerable and laid herself open; it's a deeply insightful and moving series of personal refections on her experiences as a young black woman in America. This book is not nearly so focused on the self, and Jerkins does not open herself in the same way. Part memoir and part history, it's an exploration of the effects of movement and migration on black America, and specifically, how Jerkins's own family fits into the larger picture.

There's so much to chew on here. In order to discover more about her own roots and her ancestors, Jerkins, who grew up in New Jersey, the daughter of people who came north during the Great Migration, travels across the country visiting and interviewing black folks in many locales. She visits the Gullah Geechee people on the coast of Georgia, Creole folk in Louisiana, and African-Americans with complex kinship ties to Cherokee and Seminole people in Oklahoma.

The stories she tells are fascinating and important in and of themselves, as all of her encounters help to illuminate pieces of America history that are often neglected. Using these visits as stepping-off points, she delves into the complex histories of race and family in America. She asks big questions about the importance of blood and DNA in determining identity, and about the ways that labels and definitions are often murkier that we think, and can cause their own kind of harm. The section on Creole people, and how Creole identity has been been defined differently throughout was especially thoughtful.

If I had not read her earlier book, I would have left it at that. This is a fabulous historical case study rooted in the history of one family. But I found myself seeking the kind of openness Jerkins displayed in her first book of essays. This is certainly a personal story, and Jerkins does get into the ways that learning about her family's messy history changed the way she thought about herself. But her own story sometimes felt like an afterthought--a framing device rather than something central. Perhaps the book was trying to do too much at once.

That said, this was still a smart and engaging read and has left me with plenty to think about. The audiobook, which Jerkins narrates, is wonderful. She's got a direct and very matter-of-fact way of speaking that draws you in as a listener. I'll continue to read anything she writes.

[molly samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wandering in Strange Lands is a book I highly recommend, Morgan Jerkins is a talented writer who is able to bring stories and the past to life in a way that is both touching and informative.
Jerkins takes the reader on a journey to investigate her family's history through a travel log like style, as she journeys through America in an attempt to find her ancestors and story. Jerkins specifically focuses on the Great Migration and how that affected the experiences of Black Americans.
This book is extremely well researched, but has a unique memoir storytelling quality that keeps you engaged the whole time.
I learned so much and throughly recommend to anyone interested in the nuances of how history is made through the lense of the black experience, or just wants to read a well written book.

[Hanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A memoir & cultural history combined. Jerkins explores the Great Migration of Black folks from the south to the north through her own family’s lineage. From the south lands of South Carolina & Georgia, to Louisiana and Oklahoma. I listened to an ALC of this book courtesy of Libro.fm, and tbh, I think this has made its way into one of my fave reads of the year! I loved it so much that I fully intend to buy a physical copy for my bookshelf! In the audiobook, Jerkins narrates her own book, and as usual, I’m a sucker for it, but also, her narration was genuinely so inviting. I learned so much while reading this, and kept questioning why I learned little to nothing about the great migration in school, or idk, the fact that there were free Black people living in Louisiana before it was a member of the United States?? If you’re interested at all in cultural anthropology or Black history, pick this one up!!

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written nonfiction book. I learned so much after reading this novel about the vast differences in African American roots and culture all over the United States. I really appreciate the author allowing us to permeate the walls of her family history, the good, the bad, and the ugly. This really was a journey that everyone should read to get more of an understanding of the importance of culture, especially in the African American community, and how current ideals and practices often put the preservation of many different cultures at risk.

[solomiya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wandering in Strangle Lands was a fairly quick read with a lot of new-to-me information that I most likely would not have found somewhere else, and for that alone, I enjoyed it.

I wished the book consistently read a bit more like a story (like it did initially) and a little less like a genealogy report since it made it a bit dry, and there were moments of info-dumping. I found myself confused and lost when trying to keep up with who was related to whom, who moved where, and what the connection is here or there. Overall it was a good read, and I'll definitely be reading more from this author.

thank you to Libro.FM, the author and the publisher for a free ALC of this book!

[Sachi Argabright · Rating 5 out of 5]

WANDERING IN STRANGE LANDS by Morgan Jerkins is an exploration of the Great Migration and Jerkins’s own personal narrative. After millions of Black individuals left the South to escape Jim Crow laws and discrimination, many became disconnected from their roots and heritage. In this book Jerkins retraces her family lineage, and learns the shared history of Black migrants across the country.

I absolutely loved this sophomore book from Morgan Jerkins! I really enjoyed learning alongside her, and hearing her process her thoughts as the journey progressed. There were many things I learned while reading this book, and I was so engrossed in these stories that it prompted me to finally pick up THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS by Isabel Wilkerson (spoiler alert - I finished it last night and loved it).

Things I didn’t know about or realize until I read this book: The perception of Creole individuals in the Black community, root workers and healers, the Gullah Geechee people in South Carolina, and the deep intersection of Black and Indigenous people.

Overall, this book was so beautifully written, and I especially loved the reflective moments toward the end of the book. I really appreciate the time and effort Jerkins put into this book, and I’m so glad I read it! Highly recommend for those who love history and/or want to learn more about the Great Migration.

[Jifu · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Note:I received an advanced reader copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley)

Morgan Jerkins’ investigation of her ancestors ended up becoming almost as much an avalanche of revelations to me as it was for her. With every branch of the family that she thoroughly explored through visits, research, and interviews, she ended up revealing a flood of information about some facet of the black experience in America that was either little-known to this reader, such as the Creoles of the Gulf or black Indians, or completely unknown. I became particularly aware of my own knowledge gaps when Jerkins examined roots among her Gullah ancestors of the Lowcountry in Hilton Head - a place I have vacationed with my family and had absolutely no idea was the center of a distinct subgroup and their unique culture until now.

If you are confused by any of what I have referred to, then definitely be sure to keep an eye out for when Wandering in Strange Lands arrives at your library or bookstore so that you yourself may take this eye-opening journey through the past alongside its author.

[Karen Ashmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morgan Jerkins was born and raised in South Jersey but wanted to explore her roots. She visits with Geechee in Georgia, Gullah in SC, Creoles in Louisiana, and Cherokee and Choctaw in OK. She concludes by exploring LA, where she herself had lived. I found this interesting - having grown up in SC, I am very familiar with the Gullah culture. I know a number of Creole people and was fascinated by those chapters. I know several Native Americans from OK so was interesting in comparing and contrasting her stories along with what I heard. This is a reverse Great Migration account and I learned a lot.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

At some point in human history, someone convinced people with light colored skin that gave them some sort of superiority and society has been suffering ever since.

The ridiculous thing is that there is no such thing as the "white" race. Being "white" doesn't mean anything. There's no common experience, no social connection, no tradition or heritage.

I, for example, have a mix of Scandinavian, French, German, Welsh and English ancestry. The guy sitting next to me has some Scottish ancestry, some Irish. The color of our skin does not unite us.

When it is an option, I choose "prefer not to answer" on forms that ask for my race. If I could, I would say "I am nothing," because there is no category that describes who I am.

It is my opinion that all humans must understand this. "White" is nothing. It does not entitle, provide status, or excuse. It is nothing.

Instead, as Batman says, "It's what I do that defines me."

This book is a good anthropological, social, genealogical study and it details how a lot of people have been mistreated, abused, belittled and shunned because of the color of their skin. I'm sorry about that.

I refuse to be connected to those who participated/participate in those kinds of behaviors, because I am nothing.

[Dr. Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an ALC from Libro.FM in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Okay I need more stories like this! This is such a fascinating memoir. Morgan Jerkins traces her familial roots back 300 years and follows the path they made during the Great Migration. Her story telling was so well done. She effortlessly included factual documents, interviews with the narrative portion of her story. I learned a lot about what being Creole, Seminole, and Cherokee means and the different prejudices associated with these identities. It's hard to rate non-fiction, but this story just evoked so much emotion both from Morgan and from me while reading it. This would make a fascinating documentary too!

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

“With this book, I hope to help Black people to regain their narratives and recontextualize the shame that has been pressed upon our hearts from time immemorial. We are here because we are in perpetual motion, our migratory patterns rivaling those of birds. I do not believe that there is a promised land for us in America, I am disappointed that I could not find a happier end for these pages, but you and I know that the promised land does not exist. Racism abides in all zip codes on every migratory route.... if we are the promised land, then that means that you, yes you, exist on a plane larger than your eyes can see. Home is wherever we decide to settle but our truest space is one another.”

Jerkins’ second book, a journey to dig into her past, did NOT disappoint. I listened to the audiobook quickly, anxious to find out what she did along her travels. As always her writing is flawlessly insightful. I’ll read whatever she writes but I especially loved the idea that jettisoned her onto the path to this project because I imagine it will resonate with so many other people. These kinds of stories, the ones that grow out of the most genuine & sincere interest, tend to be the most impactful. I’m very much looking forward to her next great work. I’m officially a forever fan of Jerkins.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morgan takes readers on a personal and fascinating journey to uncover her roots and find her identity. Like many Black Americans who are descendants of enslaved Africans, Morgan's parents couldn't tell her about her anything ancestors - where they came from, how they lived. She took a trip down south and out west to seek answers. She travels to Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and California. She explores Black folks connection to food, spiritual practices, water, land, culture, as well as claims to creole and indigenous ancestry. The author does a fine job weaving her experiences and family history in with what she learns about the Black experience in the communities she visits. It's clear the author did a great deal of research for this book, however she only tells as much as she finds necessary to connect to her roots. I wanted more of the history and research. Thanks to Libro.fm and the publisher I received a complimentary advance listening copy. I didn't enjoy the author's narration and I found that I wanted to take notes; I'll pick up a print copy of this book later so I can highlight passages and get a look st the author's bibliography.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Migration led to Jerkins growing up in New Jersey. Here, she explores her roots, serving as our guide as she visits and meets with Gullah-Geechee, Creole, Natives and Angelenos.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was both absorbing and heartbreaking. When Morgan Jerkins set out to find the roots of her parents before the Great Migration, it led her not only to genealogical discoveries but also to a series of stories amounting to a history-in-miniature of black Americans. Her mother's family came from the Gullah area of Georgia, her father's family originally from French Louisiana. Family legends of a Native grandmother opened the Trail of Tears and the Oklahoma territory to her investigation. Some years in Los Angeles when she was younger, as well as two uncles who moved there, prompted a dive into the contemporary world of gangs and riots against violent policing, and the discovery that a reverse migration, of young people away from the supposed promised lands back to where their families originated, is occurring on a small scale. Somehow, although black people were brought to this country originally against their will by white people, white people are still angry at them for being here. This country can never become what it set out to be until this original sin is purged, and it has not been despite the fact that we had a war about it. In the epilogue she says, "I do not believe that there is a promised land for us in America. I am disappointed that I could not find a happier ending for these pages. But you and I know that the promised land does not exist. Racism abides in all zip codes, on every migratory route. Mason Traveil, a black man whose family has been in California since emancipation, has said, 'WE are the promised land.'"

[Laura Hoffman Brauman · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Wandering in Strange Lands, Jerkins explores her family's history and experience with the great migration. Her research and exploration leads her to a better understanding of herself and her family and their connection to the Gullah Geechee community, the Creoles from Louisiana, and the Freedman and Indigenous populations. In addition, she looked at her own move as a child to LA to explore that migratory path. I appreciated hearing about her journeys to understanding and connection. This would be an excellent companion read to Warmth of Other Suns.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this on a vacation to New Orleans certainly gave me a good sense of setting. Jerkins uses her own family stories as the jumping off points that lead her to explore Gullah culture, Native American ethnic claims, migrations both north and west, and some of the half-baked or outright failed promises of America. The section about Native American ancestry and African slave ancestry overlapping with massive tension was fascinating, if sad. Genealogy is a huge pastime for some people, and the challenges descendants of slaves face in engaging in it is on display in this thoughtful book.