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Native Stranger
Recounting his journey into the heart of Africa, an African American describes his encounters with beggars and bureaucrats, his visit to Soweto, a night in a Liberian jail cell, and more. Reprint.
315 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
6 people are currently reading
244 people want to read
About the author
Eddy L. Harris
15 books33 followersEddy L. Harris is the author of six books, including Native Stranger (Vintage, 1992) and Still Life in Harlem (Holt, 1996), both selected as “Notable Books” of the year by the New York Times. He is the writer, producer, and subject of the new documentary film River to the Heart. Currently he is writing an accompanying book as well as an exploration of race in Eastern Europe. He lives in the village of Pranzac, France.
***************
Poussé par son père, il fait des études dans un collège blanc catholique, premier pas vers la Stanford University.
À 30 ans, il décide de descendre le Mississipi en canoë et fait du récit de cette expérience la matière de son premier livre, A Mississipi Solo (1988).
Native Stranger (1992) raconte le voyage d’un Blackamerican au coeur de l’Afrique. Southern Haunted Dream (1993) naît de sa traversée du Sud des Etats-Unis à moto, sur les traces de Amérique de l’esclavage et du racisme quotidien.
Still life in Harlem, qui paraît en 1996 (Harlem en traduction française, Liana Levi, 2000), mêle portraits et réflexions au cours des deux années qu’il a choisi de vivre au coeur de ce quartier new-yorkais symbole de
l’espérance noire, passée et présente.
Jupiter et moi (Liana Levi, 2005), est une évocation
de la figure paternelle.
Aujourd’hui, Eddy L. Harris a quitté Harlem et élu domicile en France (à Paris puis aujourd’hui en Poitou-Charentes), tout en voyageant régulièrement à travers les États-Unis.
Source : Entre2noirs
***************
Poussé par son père, il fait des études dans un collège blanc catholique, premier pas vers la Stanford University.
À 30 ans, il décide de descendre le Mississipi en canoë et fait du récit de cette expérience la matière de son premier livre, A Mississipi Solo (1988).
Native Stranger (1992) raconte le voyage d’un Blackamerican au coeur de l’Afrique. Southern Haunted Dream (1993) naît de sa traversée du Sud des Etats-Unis à moto, sur les traces de Amérique de l’esclavage et du racisme quotidien.
Still life in Harlem, qui paraît en 1996 (Harlem en traduction française, Liana Levi, 2000), mêle portraits et réflexions au cours des deux années qu’il a choisi de vivre au coeur de ce quartier new-yorkais symbole de
l’espérance noire, passée et présente.
Jupiter et moi (Liana Levi, 2005), est une évocation
de la figure paternelle.
Aujourd’hui, Eddy L. Harris a quitté Harlem et élu domicile en France (à Paris puis aujourd’hui en Poitou-Charentes), tout en voyageant régulièrement à travers les États-Unis.
Source : Entre2noirs
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 17, 2016
The author, an black American, travels through Africa. It is a triumph of superb writing and philosophical reflection. Quite possibly the best non-fiction book I have ever read. It is a travel book, but so much more – not as much about Africa as people, skin color, race, generosity, need, pride, and everything else that makes people human. The description was incredible: I could put the book down for long periods of time, and when I started again was transported instantly back to where Harris was, with no gap in the experience. It is about the generosity of people who have nothing, the patient endurance of people who have been conquered. Finally, Harris' honesty was astounding: he described his neuroses about germs, his anger, his sadness, his happiness in South Africa which astounded him, the tyranny of black officials, his moments of luxury amidst poverty – all this without flinching, clearly and calmly. A perfect travel book.
June 28, 2009
What's most memorable to me is the vivid reality of hunger. Harris wanders through Mali (I believe) with $3,000 in his pocket, but he is starving because there is, quite literally, NO FOOD. He eventually buys a piece of gristle from a vendor who wanders the streets with a bucket of hot water and bits of gristle that he seasons, and that you chew on to stave off the pangs of hunger. I am forever thankful for the food on my table.
January 25, 2024
Up to now, I love this book. Harris is a very author. Sometimes, the book makes me happy and sometimes it makes me angry..It is very strange to see what it's doing to me..
I am very curious what will come further!
Het boek was dikwijls moeilijk om lezen. Het was hard maar tegelijk intrigerend 9pm en verwarmend zeker en vast. De zoektocht van de schrijver is zo intens en daardoor verwarrend, zowel voor hem als voor mij eigenlijk.
Het boek heeft me helemaal mee genomen.
I am very curious what will come further!
Het boek was dikwijls moeilijk om lezen. Het was hard maar tegelijk intrigerend 9pm en verwarmend zeker en vast. De zoektocht van de schrijver is zo intens en daardoor verwarrend, zowel voor hem als voor mij eigenlijk.
Het boek heeft me helemaal mee genomen.
June 7, 2024
AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST SPENDS A YEAR IN MODERN AFRICA, AND RECORDS HIS REACTIONS
Journalist and author Eddy Harris wrote in the first chapter of this 1992 book, “Because my skin is black you will say I traveled Africa to find the roots of my race. I did not----unless that race is the human race, for except for the color of my skin, I am not African. If I didn’t know it then, I know it now. I am a product of the culture that raised me. And yet Africa was suddenly like a magnet drawing me close, important in ways that I cannot explain… It was time I went… In the mind and perhaps dreams of every person with black skin, the specter of Africa looms like the shadow of a genie… a place of magic and wonder. Africa as motherland. Africa as a source of black pride, a place of black dignity… Although I am not African, there is a line that connects that place with this one… And I longed to follow that line. But what if those old promises of Africa were only lies? What if I hated the place? Only in traveling could I discover the truth.”
He recounts ,”Suddenly I was part of a group of German and American tourists with whom I had much in common. I found myself realizing that something as subtle as culture could mean infinitely more than something as overt and obvious as the color of my skin.” (Pg. 69)
A member of his tour group named Mat told him, “There’s no law that says you should blindly love the place where your ancestors came from. And there’s no law that says what black men do to one another is any better than what white men do to black men… Mankind is greedy and selfish and tribal. Men are always looking for ways to distinguish between themselves and others. We define others so that we can define ourselves. And mark my words: when apartheid finally fails, the tribes in South Africa will start fighting among themselves… It’s what happens when empires disintegrate and the hand that holds things together is taken away.” (Pg. 79)
He realizes, “The face of Africa has Arab eyes. The great Arab empires that reached deep into the body of black Africa left imprints of Arab customs and ways of thinking. But the skin of Africa is brown, rich and dark. Now I was in the body of Africa and looking for heart and soul… Somewhere between the blackness of my skin and the whiteness of my culture I am trapped. I am a victim of cultural assimilation, and good fortune… My white friends, so they say, never think of me as being black… They mean it as a compliment, I know, but what they are saying is that if I changed the color of my skin I could be one of them. But I can’t change the color of my skin.” (Pg. 106-107)
He points out, “The Senegalese national anthem sings of brotherhood… But there is not unity in Africa. Forty thousand blacks… were forced out of Mauritania. Hundreds and hundreds were killed. Their throats were slit and their heads cut off. Women were disemboweled. Men were castrated.” (Pg. 116) Later, he adds, “In Africa it is called ‘tribalism.’ Racism doesn’t rest on white shoulders alone. It exists wherever some men have what other men want---power, money, jobs, women, food. As long as there is a way for them to keep things for themselves and for others like them. We hunger to belong and we search for ways to identify the ones who are like us and the ones who are not. Race, color, family, tribe, and religion…. We always find a way.” (Pg. 127)
He observes, “I ask myself, is it the African character or the colonial presence that defines the way Africa is? The colonials clearly have not left, and Africa asserts its own authority any way it can. And Africans readily submit to authority. They have no tradition of democracy and self-assertion, but of a central authority figure who is leader and father at the same time… The colonials had the power. Now the demagogues and despots hold the power. The new colonials are black, and somehow it seems atrocity and indignity at the hands of black men is seen as more acceptable than the same atrocity and indignity at the hands of white men. Most governments in Africa are military committees, national councils, one-party states… But what do human rights mean to governments determined to cling to power? What do human rights mean to people merely trying to cling to another day, find enough to eat, to survive and live to the ripe old age of forty-seven?” (Pg. 174-175)
He states, “The slavery hasn’t ended. Not when you think about the … self-proclaimed presidents for life… What they have done and continue to do carries on a practical joke.. started by the colonial Europeans that perpetuates black self-disdain and self-hatred. It is subconscious and subtle. But it is there. Anything white has got to be better. How could it be otherwise when to look out at the world is to see prosperity and progress, to look in at the black world is to see crooks and corruption and starvation, nothing working the way it should, no roads, no work, nothing but misery?” (Pg. 211)
A soldier told him, “This is what we have become. We learned this from the Europeans, that we are inferior people, sometimes even less than people We hate the way we look and we hate the way we act. And we try so desperately to be like them, to have what they have… We should be prouder of ourselves… Prouder of who we are and what we come from. But our heritage was stolen from us by the Europeans and now we are left without a history, except their history. We have forgotten who we are. And we have forgotten how to be human… There were great empires in Africa…. Our civilizations were vast and they were magnificent and they came to an end at the hands of other Africans. It is what we do to ourselves that gives me this crisis of the heart… We know no other way. We had no written languages. Our history and our skills were passed from one generation to the next… When the Europeans came, they destroyed all that… We have formed new traditions of our own but they are the ugly mixed-breed children of an unnatural copulation. We try our hands at democracy but we aren’t ready for it. Some captain always stages a coup.” (Pg. 268)
He summarizes, “The politics of Africa are a mire of vexation… Africa is trying to find its way and desperately needs to, but as long as European powers continue to intervene, as long as colonialism continues, Africa never will.” (Pg. 293-294)
He concludes, “My skin is black. My culture is not. After almost a year in Africa, I have no answers. Only this one question remains: WHO AM I? I have more in common, it sometimes seems, with the Dutch Afrikaner, the Boer… I could no more return to Africa to live than I could live on the moon.” (Pg. 311)
He ends, “It is a beautiful country. It’s easy to see why the white South Africans want to keep it for themselves. It is man’s nature. But it could be such a beautiful world, if we could defy the darker sides of our nature.” (Pg. 314)
This is a fascinating, insightful, and honest book, that will be “must reading” for anyone contemplating “going back to the Motherland.”
Journalist and author Eddy Harris wrote in the first chapter of this 1992 book, “Because my skin is black you will say I traveled Africa to find the roots of my race. I did not----unless that race is the human race, for except for the color of my skin, I am not African. If I didn’t know it then, I know it now. I am a product of the culture that raised me. And yet Africa was suddenly like a magnet drawing me close, important in ways that I cannot explain… It was time I went… In the mind and perhaps dreams of every person with black skin, the specter of Africa looms like the shadow of a genie… a place of magic and wonder. Africa as motherland. Africa as a source of black pride, a place of black dignity… Although I am not African, there is a line that connects that place with this one… And I longed to follow that line. But what if those old promises of Africa were only lies? What if I hated the place? Only in traveling could I discover the truth.”
He recounts ,”Suddenly I was part of a group of German and American tourists with whom I had much in common. I found myself realizing that something as subtle as culture could mean infinitely more than something as overt and obvious as the color of my skin.” (Pg. 69)
A member of his tour group named Mat told him, “There’s no law that says you should blindly love the place where your ancestors came from. And there’s no law that says what black men do to one another is any better than what white men do to black men… Mankind is greedy and selfish and tribal. Men are always looking for ways to distinguish between themselves and others. We define others so that we can define ourselves. And mark my words: when apartheid finally fails, the tribes in South Africa will start fighting among themselves… It’s what happens when empires disintegrate and the hand that holds things together is taken away.” (Pg. 79)
He realizes, “The face of Africa has Arab eyes. The great Arab empires that reached deep into the body of black Africa left imprints of Arab customs and ways of thinking. But the skin of Africa is brown, rich and dark. Now I was in the body of Africa and looking for heart and soul… Somewhere between the blackness of my skin and the whiteness of my culture I am trapped. I am a victim of cultural assimilation, and good fortune… My white friends, so they say, never think of me as being black… They mean it as a compliment, I know, but what they are saying is that if I changed the color of my skin I could be one of them. But I can’t change the color of my skin.” (Pg. 106-107)
He points out, “The Senegalese national anthem sings of brotherhood… But there is not unity in Africa. Forty thousand blacks… were forced out of Mauritania. Hundreds and hundreds were killed. Their throats were slit and their heads cut off. Women were disemboweled. Men were castrated.” (Pg. 116) Later, he adds, “In Africa it is called ‘tribalism.’ Racism doesn’t rest on white shoulders alone. It exists wherever some men have what other men want---power, money, jobs, women, food. As long as there is a way for them to keep things for themselves and for others like them. We hunger to belong and we search for ways to identify the ones who are like us and the ones who are not. Race, color, family, tribe, and religion…. We always find a way.” (Pg. 127)
He observes, “I ask myself, is it the African character or the colonial presence that defines the way Africa is? The colonials clearly have not left, and Africa asserts its own authority any way it can. And Africans readily submit to authority. They have no tradition of democracy and self-assertion, but of a central authority figure who is leader and father at the same time… The colonials had the power. Now the demagogues and despots hold the power. The new colonials are black, and somehow it seems atrocity and indignity at the hands of black men is seen as more acceptable than the same atrocity and indignity at the hands of white men. Most governments in Africa are military committees, national councils, one-party states… But what do human rights mean to governments determined to cling to power? What do human rights mean to people merely trying to cling to another day, find enough to eat, to survive and live to the ripe old age of forty-seven?” (Pg. 174-175)
He states, “The slavery hasn’t ended. Not when you think about the … self-proclaimed presidents for life… What they have done and continue to do carries on a practical joke.. started by the colonial Europeans that perpetuates black self-disdain and self-hatred. It is subconscious and subtle. But it is there. Anything white has got to be better. How could it be otherwise when to look out at the world is to see prosperity and progress, to look in at the black world is to see crooks and corruption and starvation, nothing working the way it should, no roads, no work, nothing but misery?” (Pg. 211)
A soldier told him, “This is what we have become. We learned this from the Europeans, that we are inferior people, sometimes even less than people We hate the way we look and we hate the way we act. And we try so desperately to be like them, to have what they have… We should be prouder of ourselves… Prouder of who we are and what we come from. But our heritage was stolen from us by the Europeans and now we are left without a history, except their history. We have forgotten who we are. And we have forgotten how to be human… There were great empires in Africa…. Our civilizations were vast and they were magnificent and they came to an end at the hands of other Africans. It is what we do to ourselves that gives me this crisis of the heart… We know no other way. We had no written languages. Our history and our skills were passed from one generation to the next… When the Europeans came, they destroyed all that… We have formed new traditions of our own but they are the ugly mixed-breed children of an unnatural copulation. We try our hands at democracy but we aren’t ready for it. Some captain always stages a coup.” (Pg. 268)
He summarizes, “The politics of Africa are a mire of vexation… Africa is trying to find its way and desperately needs to, but as long as European powers continue to intervene, as long as colonialism continues, Africa never will.” (Pg. 293-294)
He concludes, “My skin is black. My culture is not. After almost a year in Africa, I have no answers. Only this one question remains: WHO AM I? I have more in common, it sometimes seems, with the Dutch Afrikaner, the Boer… I could no more return to Africa to live than I could live on the moon.” (Pg. 311)
He ends, “It is a beautiful country. It’s easy to see why the white South Africans want to keep it for themselves. It is man’s nature. But it could be such a beautiful world, if we could defy the darker sides of our nature.” (Pg. 314)
This is a fascinating, insightful, and honest book, that will be “must reading” for anyone contemplating “going back to the Motherland.”
July 14, 2020
Published in 1992.
This is the most powerful travelogue I have ever read. This is the voice of a person whose skin color is the first thing people of any country he lives or visits - sees. It is from this one characteristic that strangers make assumptions about who he is or where he is from.
It has been hundreds of years, generations since the family of the author lived in Africa, yet while traveling there his skin color can make friends or enemies in an instant. The author is not on a journey to discover his family roots or even on a quest to better understand his identity. He begins his journey with the naive hopes that he will only be an observer as he travels through many African countries. Can any of us travel anonymously through a country if we are conscious of the history, politics, and status of the local people in the country you are visiting?
I recall visiting Haiti as a 6-year old, riding a donkey up to the Citadel and seeing the shantytowns. I remember asking my mother if these were the people's homes. And when she said, yes, it forever changed how I see the world. That is what travel does - it changes your perspective on your world and the world around you.
Eddy L. Harris is absorbed by Africa in a way no white person - like Paul Theroux - ever could. He, in a sense, gets a back-stage-view of the places he visits. He doesn't get the tourist view, or the white person view - but it is a view he isn't necessarily comfortable seeing.
Mr. Harris's reflection are priceless and valuable in understanding that once you have lived in another country - you can't just "go back" you are forever changed.
This is the most powerful travelogue I have ever read. This is the voice of a person whose skin color is the first thing people of any country he lives or visits - sees. It is from this one characteristic that strangers make assumptions about who he is or where he is from.
It has been hundreds of years, generations since the family of the author lived in Africa, yet while traveling there his skin color can make friends or enemies in an instant. The author is not on a journey to discover his family roots or even on a quest to better understand his identity. He begins his journey with the naive hopes that he will only be an observer as he travels through many African countries. Can any of us travel anonymously through a country if we are conscious of the history, politics, and status of the local people in the country you are visiting?
I recall visiting Haiti as a 6-year old, riding a donkey up to the Citadel and seeing the shantytowns. I remember asking my mother if these were the people's homes. And when she said, yes, it forever changed how I see the world. That is what travel does - it changes your perspective on your world and the world around you.
Eddy L. Harris is absorbed by Africa in a way no white person - like Paul Theroux - ever could. He, in a sense, gets a back-stage-view of the places he visits. He doesn't get the tourist view, or the white person view - but it is a view he isn't necessarily comfortable seeing.
Mr. Harris's reflection are priceless and valuable in understanding that once you have lived in another country - you can't just "go back" you are forever changed.
May 24, 2012
This ia a well-done travel essay book that gives some real insights into modern Africa. Harris’ observations are spliced in with his reports on his travels and thus make the book an easy read. His observations are sometimes expected. For instance, he details the effects of Arab and European colonization on various African countries. But he is not one sided. He does note the benefits those civilizations left behind. He also details the appalling situations that have come about under the regimes that were established post-colonization and notes that atrocities happened just as much with black and black situations as much as they did under Arab and black or white and black situations. (Due to the things he observed in north Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, Harris reports that he’d only be able to live in South Africa or Zimbabwe, both nations that were adjusting from the end of apartheid or apartheid-like systems, as those nations were the only ones that maintained a western standard of living.)
Recommended to anyone who wants to gain an understanding of post-colonial Africa especially that of the late Cold War. (The book’s 1992 publication date does mean that the book discusses leaders since overthrown or dead, such as Mobutu of what was then Zaire or John Doe of Liberia.) Counties discussed: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.
Recommended to anyone who wants to gain an understanding of post-colonial Africa especially that of the late Cold War. (The book’s 1992 publication date does mean that the book discusses leaders since overthrown or dead, such as Mobutu of what was then Zaire or John Doe of Liberia.) Counties discussed: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.
October 28, 2011
Well basically its about this black guy who takes a trip to Africa alone and meets a lot of different people and learns a lot of different things about different people like that the majority of Africa is Muslim. He learned a lot about the Muslim culture like how its pretty much the same religion as everyone else with similar stories, and customs. So this trip makes him take a look at himself and figures out that he is just as racist as everyone else and that you are not your a product of ethnicity but that you are a product of the culture you are brought up in.
I thought it was interesting and I learned a lot about Africa that i didn't have a clue about, like how awful they still treat their women, the Muslim religion, and the awful poverty that grips the place, along with the rude military presence.
I thought it was interesting and I learned a lot about Africa that i didn't have a clue about, like how awful they still treat their women, the Muslim religion, and the awful poverty that grips the place, along with the rude military presence.
November 10, 2022
I absolutely loved this book. What a journey and considering it was 32 years ago, it still holds up very well.
July 5, 2022
DMC @61%… maybe I will put it back up at some points. But there aren’t any books that take me years to read. I’m not sure how one can make a journey through the continent of Africa so boring…. I’m
Out.
Out.
December 23, 2022
Every page was riveting and this is such a fresh dimension and outlook, or rather, in-look. I was eager to get to the next chapter for the tales of more adventure and for the observations on such unique cultures.
The only really bad, downside was the author's way of engaging the various peoples in violent disagreements when his patience is taxed by the culture and the corruption, both of which mingle in ways that are virtually inseparable at times. And so the author wound up in jail more than once. The times this happened were more due to his attitude (I conjecture) than to actual law-breaking.
The only really bad, downside was the author's way of engaging the various peoples in violent disagreements when his patience is taxed by the culture and the corruption, both of which mingle in ways that are virtually inseparable at times. And so the author wound up in jail more than once. The times this happened were more due to his attitude (I conjecture) than to actual law-breaking.
April 11, 2010
As fascinating today as it was when I read it almost 20 years ago. Try reading this and Mississippi Solo back-to-back to get the full flavor of this author and his quest.
September 13, 2011
This was the first Eddy Harris book that I read. It is one of my favourites of his.
If anyone is interested in the experiences of a BlackAmerican -- as he refers to himself -- in Africa -- PLEASE read this book.
If anyone is interested in the experiences of a BlackAmerican -- as he refers to himself -- in Africa -- PLEASE read this book.
March 15, 2009
An honest and revealing story of a black American's visit to Africa, thinking he would be with his "brothers." He was a complete stranger.
June 11, 2009
I was fascinated/repulsed by the way he confronted authority figures. Definitely not in my DNA!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews