From the editor : Not long after his Baltimore townhouse is invaded one night--and Slaughter confronts, shoots, and kills the intruder with his shotgun--he embarks on a series of trips that unfold over almost a decade. Along the way he discovers a way of life that transforms and deepens his identity as an African American.

Slaughter finds himself seduced and humbled by the contrasting realities, beauties, and dangers he discovers in East Africa. He begins to ask questions, out loud, about his life, his relationships, and his place here in 21st century North America, where different varieties of fear seem to rule everyone to one degree or another. In Africa, he encounters different ways of life (among both Africans and other visitors to the continent) that expand his sense of possibility and begin to change his conceptions of life's purpose and meaning. Slaughter's vivid, blunt, and erudite narrative voice moves back and forth from his past growing up in the sixties and seventies through the present-tense of his journeys, and ranges widely across American culture in unearthing, probing, and assessing the truths that Africa helps teach him about his life--and all of our lives--here in America.

Pages: 135
Special Interest: Culture, Africa, African-American Studies, Realities, Magick, Ritual.