Stephen Hayes reviewed Searching For Zion by Emily Raboteau
None
5 stars
A history of people who are searching for a lost home and for the promised land.
Emily Raboteau, daughter of an eminent historian and herself a student of history, writes a personal and family history as well as a story of people searching for the promised land. An African-American, of mixed race, she grows up envying her childhood best friend, a Jew, who emigrates to Israel to find her promised land. So she travels to Israel to visit her friend, and see if she found the promised land, and that sparks off her interest in other people looking for a promised land, and what she finds is ambiguous.
The trouble with a promised land it that one usually finds other people already living there, and so it is and was with modern and ancient Israel. Raboteau meets "Black Jews" who came from Ethiopia, and had left Ethiopia because they saw …
A history of people who are searching for a lost home and for the promised land.
Emily Raboteau, daughter of an eminent historian and herself a student of history, writes a personal and family history as well as a story of people searching for the promised land. An African-American, of mixed race, she grows up envying her childhood best friend, a Jew, who emigrates to Israel to find her promised land. So she travels to Israel to visit her friend, and see if she found the promised land, and that sparks off her interest in other people looking for a promised land, and what she finds is ambiguous.
The trouble with a promised land it that one usually finds other people already living there, and so it is and was with modern and ancient Israel. Raboteau meets "Black Jews" who came from Ethiopia, and had left Ethiopia because they saw Mount Zion in Jerusalem as the promised land.
But for Rastafarians, Ethiopia itself is the promised land, so her journey takes her to Jamaica, drawn partly by her interest in Bob Marley's music, and the fact that Marley, like herself, was of "mixed" ancestry.
She then visits Ethiopia, and Rastafarian settlements there, and looks at the relations between the incomers and the native Ethiopians. Then Ghana, where many African-Americans, influenced by Marcus Garvey, sought their home and promised land, only to find that most the the Ghanaians saw America as the promised land, and would sacrifice a great deal to go there.
She returns to the USA, and visits a Neopentecostal prosperity church, which for many black Americans seems to offer a different kind of promised land. And finally she visits the US South, recently ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, where many of her own relatives have become displaced people, but her cousin refuses to speak the language of victimhood and says they are not victims, but survivors.
In reading it, I was reminded of two other books I had read: [b:The long Road Home|26511|The Long Road Home|Danielle Steel|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1300210382l/26511.SY75.jpg|1607354] by [a:Ben Shephard|137451|Ben Shephard|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], about people who were displaced after the Second World War, many of whom had no homes to return to. The second is [b:From the Holy Mountain|104039|From the Holy Mountain A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East|William Dalrymple|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312034282l/104039.SY75.jpg|896879] by [a:William Dalrymple|60159|William Dalrymple|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1458715877p2/60159.jpg]. about following in the footsteps of a couple of pilgrims of antiquity, and visiting the places they visited in modern times. It, like [b:Searching for Zion|15811130|Searching for Zion The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora|Emily Raboteau|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1369869876l/15811130.SY75.jpg|21536305], bring the personal touch to history, and [a:Emily Raboteau|350009|Emily Raboteau|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s Odyssey is a personal pilgrimage as well as a study of other pilgrims.
Other historians, and sociologists and anthropologists have written about such people, in a dry, objective and academic manner. But Emily Raboteau does not. She looks at the history from both sides, and analyses her own reactions, and this is what makes the book really worth reading. She tells other people's stories well, but weaves them with her own.