Review: Travellers’ checks

Vivienne Dovi’s eyes are opened by a series of essays on the politics of mobility

The World Today Updated 4 February 2021 3 minute READ

Vivienne Dovi

MSc African Studies student at the University of Oxford, freelance writer and the Founder of Melanin Travel

Travelling While Black: Essays Inspired by a Life on the Move
Nanjala Nyabola, Hurst, £14.99

Reading Travelling While Black feels like engaging in a conversation that I have always wanted to have. The foreword bluntly informs you that ‘this is not a travel memoir’ – and rightly so. The book’s 17 essays span a wide range of issues inspired by the author’s individual journeys. 

Nyabola, a Kenyan-born writer, speaker and political analyst, raises questions and provides eloquent insight into experiences that people living in the West may sympathize with but are unlikely to ever endure: appalling processes to get a visa, crossing the Mediterranean to seek asylum, or knowing no other home than a refugee camp. 

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