Searching for Zion
A decade in the making, Emily Raboteauas Searching for Zion takes readers around the world on an unexpected adventure of faith. Both one womanas quest for a place to call ahomea and an investigation into a peopleas search for the Promised Land, this landmark work of creative nonfiction is a trenchant inquiry into contemporary and historical ethnic displacement. At the age of twenty-three, award-winning writer Emily Raboteau traveled to Israel to visit her childhood best friend. While her friend appeared to have found a place to belong, Raboteau could not yet say the same for herself. As a biracial woman from a country still divided along racial lines, shead never felt at home in America. But as a reggae fan and the daughter of a historian of African-American religion, Raboteau knew of qZionq as a place black people yearned to be. Shead heard about it on Bob Marleyas Exodus and in the speeches of Martin Luther King. She understood it as a metaphor for freedom, a spiritual realm rather than a geographical one. Now in Israel, the Jewish Zion, she was surprised to discover black Jews. More surprising was the story of how they got there. Inspired by their exodus, Raboteau sought out other black communities that left home in search of a Promised Land. Her question for them is same she asks herself: have you found the home youare looking for? On her ten-year journey back in time and around the globe, through the Bush years and into the age of Obama, Raboteau wanders to Jamaica, Ethiopia, Ghana, and the American South to explore the complex and contradictory perspectives of Black Zionists. She talks to Rastafarians and African Hebrew Israelites, Evangelicals and Ethiopian Jews, and Katrina transplants from her own familyapeople that have risked everything in search of territory that is hard to define and harder to inhabit. Uniting memoir with historical and cultural investigation, Raboteau overturns our ideas of place and patriotism, displacement and dispossession, citizenship and country in a disarmingly honest and refreshingly brave take on the pull of the story of Exodus.More surprising was the story of how they got there. Inspired by their exodus, Raboteau sought out other black communities that left home in search of a Promised Land.
| Title | : | Searching for Zion |
| Author | : | Emily Raboteau |
| Publisher | : | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. - 2013-01-08 |
You must register with us as either a Registered User before you can Download this Book. You'll be greeted by a simple sign-up page.
Once you have finished the sign-up process, you will be redirected to your download Book page.
How it works:- 1. Register a free 1 month Trial Account.
- 2. Download as many books as you like (Personal use)
- 3. Cancel the membership at any time if not satisfied.
