Wanda's picks (12/31/03)

by Wanda Sabir: (Columnist at sfbayview.com)

‘Journey to the Motherland: From San Francisco to Benin City’

“Journey to the Motherland: From San Francisco to Benin City” by Larry Ukali Johnson-Redd ($14.95 paperback, Amen-Ra Theological Seminary Press) is a story that needed to be told, and the fact that the setting is San Francisco makes the places that much more accessible to Bay Area readers. In “Journey,” one man’s impressions of West Africa, its people and customs, the author’s witty and frank insight makes the short - just 159 pages - book a page turner.

Johnson-Redd begins his autobiography with a quote from an article by Ide Eguabor titled “Meet the Expatriate,” the notion of patriotism one that Johnson-Redd rejects in his desire initially to leave America forever, especially when, after completing a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree, he cannot find a job.

However, “Journey” is also the story of how young Johnson-Redd became a revolutionary … a kid who figuratively took bullets at his Balboa High School campus so that Black students could organize and educate the Black student population about its heroes and culture.

“Journey” moves between Johnson-Redd’s eventual realization that America is his home to his struggles in the ‘60s with male chauvinism with respect to the Black Power Movement, his marriage to an African sister, and his writing (poetry) and community activism, as it plots a course trodden by too many 50-year-old black men. The poet-writer tells a great story, an honest story, one that youth and adults, both men and women, would enjoy.

http://www.journeytothemotherland.net