Starred review from July 1, 2022
Born in Cameroon, lawyer/essayist Bee (whose writing has been published in Politico and n+1) shares the story of her search for identity, home, and belonging. Adopted by her aunt and her aunt's white French husband, Bee is raised in France until her adoptive parents' divorce, which sends her and her mother to London and eventually to Reno, NV. She and her mother experienced housing insecurities throughout her childhood and young adult life, but this did not stop her from graduating from college in three years and attending Harvard Law School, which catapulted her to a career as a lawyer with an economic/financial justice--oriented practice in Washington, DC (including as counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau). This memoir examines the multiple and expanding ways the author defines home--it's organized around dictionary-style definitions--throughout her life, interrogating name, place, space, and ideologies. Bee's lyrical, emotive prose takes readers through her life with an intimacy that draws and keeps them close. VERDICT Bee's memoir is experimental in form but will appeal to a variety of reader, challenging singular beliefs of what it means to be a daughter, sister, lover, wife, lawyer, and mother.--Rebekah J. Buchanan
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Starred review from July 11, 2022
Bee, a consumer-protection lawyer and essayist, traces her diffuse family tree in this tender and captivating exploration of the meaning of home. Born in 1988 Cameroon and adopted by her aunt (referred to throughout as “mom”) soon after, the author is the only one of her father’s children to carry his last name, despite being estranged from him since birth. In vivid recreated diary entries, Bee recounts her move with her mother to Lyon, France, in the early 1990s, the racialized volatility that rocked their housing complex, and their subsequent move to London, where, for a time, they were homeless. Bee moved to Nevada at age 13 to be nearer relatives, as described in a chapter of urgent numbered fragments that follows Bee through American high school, early socioeconomic reckonings, evangelical Christianity, and her marriage at age 19. After graduating from Harvard Law and getting a divorce, Bee confronted what it means to exist within American racial dynamics: “I was not African American, but lived under blackness in this country.” Rather than let displacement define her, though, Bee draws strength and insight from her adversities. Of her name, she writes, “If I am to never feel completely at home in it, then I must make a new home of it.” What emerges is a rich and enthralling story of finding oneself outside of the bounds of borders and beliefs. This offers radiant hope in the face of darkness.
September 1, 2022
A Cameroonian-born lawyer and essayist explores layers of a multiracial upbringing across cultures, continents, and economic classes. By age 14, Bee had lived in four different countries: Cameroon, which she left in infancy with her aunt and her aunt's White husband; France, where she spent most of her childhood; England, where she lived as a preteen; and the U.S., which became her adopted home. All of her moves brought connections to cultures far different from the traditional, clan-centered traditions in Cameroon. They also gave her an early awareness that she was a Black girl moving in a White-dominated world. "My blackness was a marker that assigned me in and out of teams," she writes. "The stark contrast against my dad's white skin and differing last name reminded me of having been imported. An outsider in my body and in my own home." After her aunt divorced and left for London with no job, Bee also came to know housing insecurity and that the concept of home was as impermanent and as "cumulative as a nesting doll." The Christian faith she shared with her aunt became the impetus to join an evangelical church in Nevada, where Bee and her aunt eventually moved. Academic success led to Harvard Law School, a radical restructuring of her worldview, and the painful end of an early marriage to a fellow evangelical. Answering a calling to seek economic justice for others who faced housing insecurity, Bee took a job with the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C. Her life stabilized, and she bought a house of her own. Still, the meaning of home, including the Black female body that faced so much danger in the world, continued to haunt her, as did the distance between her birthplace and her present-day circumstances. Interwoven throughout with Bee's personal and multifaceted definitions of home, this richly tapestried memoir offers a unique perspective on identity as it restlessly probes the nature of belonging. An intimately incisive life story.
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September 15, 2022
Bee's debut memoir looks at the definition of home through a microscopic lens. Born in Yaound�, Cameroon, Bee was adopted by her aunt and her aunt's white French husband. Although her adoptive parents raised her with love, Bee questions why they never changed her last name from that of her birth father, Assae Bill�. After her adoptive parents divorce, Bee is introduced to the many realities of poverty, grief, and a nomadic lifestyle. Learning details about both her biological and adoptive parents forces the author to question what she thought she knew about Christianity, love, and being at home in her own skin. In many aspects, her life ends up mirroring the lives of all four of her parents, a truth she learns to embrace and redefine for herself. Bee analyzes her parents' choices without judging them. Forgiveness isn't an easy handout for Bee. A Harvard Law School graduate, she ultimately finds her own version of success and realizes that, no matter her given name or identity, she holds the power to rewrite her own definitions of home.
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