My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this memoir in exchange for an honest review.

Let me start off by confessing that I am not a huge fan of memoirs, but the advance reviews were very appreciative and supportive so I decided to check it out for myself!

<img src="https://media.tenor.com/xoODe76Use4AAAAM/kiss-cheek-grateful.gif"/>

The writing style often had me back-tracking to reread a line here and there: the author sometimes packs a lot into a sentence. But apart from this, you are taken on an incredible journey.

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Identity - and the definition of "home" - is a main theme running throughout this memoir. This is someone who has been uprooted so many times in her life, having to start over and over again, having to redefine herself and decide, ultimately, who she actually IS - despite the variety of cultural influences and social expectations that she was exposed to at each stage of her life.

It took me a while to get through this one, but, I am glad I stuck with it. Four out of five stars for this well-done memoir.

HOMEBOUND is Vanessa A. Bee’s memoir about her journey finding her identity and home as a Cameroonian adopted by her aunt and her white French husband living in Europe and eventually the United States.

She reflects on her path to belonging, navigating complicated familial relationships, her religion, her divorce, and defining how she comes to build meaningful life and home.

“Certain people and lands held such power over us that being back in their midst rewired us, transformed our voices, uncovered hidden faces, and to know someone, really know them, demanded that context.”

I loved being transported to different countries, languages, ways of life and belief systems.

For the depth and range of takeaways her story covered, it could easily have felt rushed or oversimplified but it was far from it.

Some parts I connected with the most was her examination of the importance of representation of black beauty in the media — seeing blackness elevated and appreciated is extremely meaningful and important.

The consequences of compliance and complicity in our society, especially when protecting women [black women] was moving. We have unfortunately created a culture of nonintervention -- where we commonly turn a blind eye to injustice because we value our comfort over helping others.

Her relationship with her biological father and adopted father was interwoven throughout the book and was emotional but also eye-opening in how to accept people’s limitations for your own peace.

5/5. There's so much more I could say. Easily my favorite memoir of the year. I couldn’t recommend this enough.

Vanessa, thank you for your vulnerability, honesty and thoughtfulness and @astrahousebooks for the gifted copy.

What a fantastic book!! Bee’s writing is wonderful on a sentence-level. I loved the structure (around definitions of “home”). It was so interesting reading her story and reflections. I look forward to reading more from her in the future.

A stunning journey of a working class woman moving from rural France to Nevada.

The central theme of Bee's memoir is home or at least the concept of such. This is a novel that connects to you deeply and stays with you for a long time. We move through Vanessa's life with her, dealing with migration, transcultural switching, code switching, and the conflicting culture. Finding community. A lot of which I related to.

Much of the novel focuses on sexism and gender. What it means to be a woman and be objectified. Bee makes some great points and shares experiences many people can relate to.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⬜
Title: Home Bound: An Uprooted Daughter's Reflections on Belonging
Author: Vanessa A Bee
Genre: Memoir
Setting: Cameroon, France, England, United States
Month Read: September 2022
Book Type: E-Arc
Publication: October 2022
Publisher: Astra House
Pages: 256
*Thank you to NetGalley and Astra House for my E-Arc of this novel. It has in no way influenced my review.


TRIGGER WARNING-
Racism / Misogyny / Religion / Pregnancy / Sexual Assault


"Half our lists won't make it under the Christmas tree. But the dreaming is free."


No Spoiler Summary:
Born in Cameroon and adopted by her aunt and her aunt's white French husband, Vanessa A. Bee grew up in a village in France where her adoptive father worked in a Renault factory. After her parents divorced, Vanessa was uprooted time and again due to her adoptive mother's changing circumstances, experiencing housing insecurity both in France and the UK. Asa teen she immigrates to Reno, Nevada, on the cusp of the housing crisis. Eventually, after graduating from Harvard Law School and navigating a career in economic justice, Vanessa makes a home for herself in Washington, DC.

Vanessa's adoptive, multiracial, multilingual, multinational, and transcontinental upbringing has made her grapple for years with foundational questions such as: What is home? Is it the country we're born in, the body we possess, or the name we were given and that identifies us? Is it the house we remember most fondly, the social status assigned to us, or the ideology we forge? What defines us and makes us uniquely who we are?

Organized around her own dictionary-style definitions of the word "home," Vanessa tackles these timeless questions thematically and unpacks the many layers that contribute to and condition our understanding of ourselves and of our place in the world.


Review:
I cannot recommend reading this book enough, and after slogging through a lot of books this year that I didn't really enjoy, this book reminded me why I love reading. I'm not a huge fan of non-fiction, but this read so easily, and I was so invested in the story I could hardly put it down. Vanessa tells a beautiful story that I felt so drawn to, and while we live very different lives, I felt so many shared experiences (missing birth fathers and questioning identity, motherhood, etc). If every Memoir read like this, I'd read them far more frequently.

I learned so much reading this book about so many different cultures, communities, and felt like I had travelled all over the world with her. While not an easy life by any means, Vanessa constantly rose above, and I'm happy to see her thrive. (If you don't follow her on Social Media, you should.) I'm so glad I was able to get an Arc of this, as it has been on my reading list since she announced it, and I'm so happy that her pub date is almost here.

If you love Memoirs (or don't) I would give this book a shot, because it's just a really well written, beautiful novel. I cannot wait to read what Vanessa writes next.



"I had new life to grow, to dedicate my heart to, and build a loving home for."

I LOVED THIS. The writing is absolutely mesmerising. Vanessa A. Bee’s story resonated a lot with me as someone who has ties to so many places and cultures, yet is always considered ‘not enough’ to actually belong anywhere. Longing for a place I can call home is something I’ve dealt with my entire life. This memoir is everything I needed and more (so much more!) Bottom line: Go read Home Bound.

Lyrically written a search for home for identity.I was drawn in to the authors life her identity.So involving so moving raw real intimate.Perfect for book club discussion.#netgalley #astrapublishing.

Oh how I loved this book from the very beginning! The author describes how complicated and convoluted it would be to summarize her entire identity every time in answer to the question "where are you from?" and how instead she chooses relevant bits and pieces to cobble together answers that suit the situation and the person (usually a stranger) asking. "But don't we all do this? Don't you?" she asks, and I wanted to scream, "YES!!!" because I've also lived in different countries, have an unplaceable accent, and don't fit in to a neat box in terms of nationality or origin.

The author takes us on a long, intercontinental voyage to discover all of the places, events, and - most importantly - family members that contribute to her sense of "home". Let me warn you, this woman has more relatives than anyone I've ever met. Then again, I come from a very small family, though also intercontinental, so other readers may find it easier to relate to this aspect. In fact, as I read on I at times felt jealous of how rich her life is with cultures, connections, and an ever-increasing number of parents, aunts, and half-siblings - not to mention cousins. Amazingly, I never got lost or wondered who was who, because the author does a fantastic job of introducing each person in turn, clearly identifying time and place, and using context cues and names to make sure the reader knows who she's talking about. By the end of the book, the author is only barely into her 30s yet it feels like she has lived at least 3 lives - one in bucolic France, another in urban European poverty, a third in evangelical America...and there are many more you get to learn about.

At times I thought some events were described in too much detail, perhaps very important to the author but less so to the reader (for example I found it hard to care that she was very mad at Charlie, a half-sibling we meet only briefly); on the other hand, some big questions weren't answered in the end: How tied is she to each place, where is she drawn to now? Which traditions from each place she lived has she maintained? And most intriguingly for me, how has her (somewhat surprising) political stance evolved as she has settled into adulthood? Perhaps there will be a part 2 to this sophisticated memoir one day, and I will gladly read it.

Vanessa A. Bee beautifully contends with the tensions in her identity in this memoir. Born in Cameroon, with childhoods spent in France, England, and the United States, Vanessa is someone who the question “where are you from” comes with complicated nuance. She writes with great empathy about her sometimes fraught and conflicting influences on her identity, the family disagreements that predate her existence or float on top of her. Her reflections on home, what it means for her practically and philosophically and what she thinks it might mean for others are thought provoking.

The scope of this memoir is vast - Vanessa also writes with great responsibility to educate her reader about not only the countries and cultures that are integral to her being, but also issues of racism and sexism as they play out in her life, and her own evolving relationship with religion. Indeed, the vastness of the memoir is the one place where I sometimes felt at sea, especially in her adult years as she glossed over some years and lingered on others. The overarching theme of Home was perhaps not quite connective enough. Overall I enjoyed this read immensely and felt a deep and sympathetic pull toward Vanessa. The ending of the memoir was so full of heart that I am sure I’ll be thinking about it for some time.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for the opportunity to read this e-ARC.

This memoir is well written, but did not seem to meet the description or title. It felt, to me, that the author tried too hard to define her life by "home" and at times it was overthought. Well presented and well thought out discussions of poverty, privilege, safety, gender, and race were included, but at times the threads connecting her thoughts to "home" felt stretched, although the thoughts were appreciated.

It's been a few days since I finished reading Home Bound and I'm still mulling it over in my head, turning the things Vanessa -- can I call her that? Is it too familiar? -- has told me. On the one hand, it feels like she and I have much in common: the Spice Girls and Hey, Arnold! are part of the memorabilia of my own 90s teenage years. Vanessa's memoir strikes a familiar note in many ways. Home Bound is a memoir of movement and migration, transcultural and transnational switching and code switching, and the conflict of culture between places and communities and within a place and a single community. I know that. I've experienced that before and now, still.

Home Bound traces Vanessa's life from her childhood through to the present, across time as well as space. Her life begins in Cameroon, a place she is ever drawn back to (is she as uprooted as the title suggests), but she grows up in France, in a number of places, in a number of homes and neighborhoods. Vanessa disabuses us of any romantic notions of France and how the French live. But then, she makes the point in her memoir that she is only partially French. Her memoir takes us to London where she was more French than English, a mix of Cameroonian and French depending on the location. Then to America, where she becomes domiciled in one of the most American of American states, Texas.

But, of course, Home Bound is more than just a travel log.

The book takes us into deep discussions about gender and what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a sexual being, a sexualized being or object, and how to object to that objectification. It explores mothering and growing up, coming-of-age and what that means when it is done across multiple cultures. The book is also about faith, the religious kind and the internal, subjective kind ("believing in yourself"). Vanessa boldly brings up being of mixed race heritage, discusses adoption and parentage. Lineage is a major thread that winds through the book, guides the reader. Ideas are intergenerational, travel through blood as well as through proximity, from a caregiver to their charge. Education is not merely academic, formal, institutionalized. Home Bound makes it clear that it is more complex than that, it is pervasive within and out of the classroom.

The classroom is a large part of Vanessa's memoir. I should say, education is a large part of her memoir. The classroom is the locale of her education, the formal kind and the ideological kind. It is here, in the discussion of education and upbringing that Vanessa's story departs from my own and I feel like I am watching a film of someone else. Someone who feels familiar but is not me.

There is familiarity in the the demise of her American dream. Its death is similar in some ways to what happened to my own. She says in one part how she had thought of herself in some ways as white, having been raised and lived among white people for so long. It's not an uncommon experience. Fanon was onto something universal when he warned us of masks and disguises that fool no one but ourselves. Vanessa and I both woke up. Then our American dream died, unable to sustain in the reality of 21st century capitalism and American privatization, without a trust fund to help keep it breathing. The classroom had a lot to do with the deaths of our dreams.

I realize now, as I write this, why I call her Vanessa. It seems like Bee isn't her name. Shouldn't it is be Billé? And why "A." and not "Assae"? I suspect this has something to do with the subtitle, Uprooted. For me, the subtitle, An Uprooted Daughter's Reflections on Belonging, strikes me differently, perhaps because of my academic background in history. The subtitle calls to mind Oscar Handlin's The Uprooted, that magnum opus of migration history that centered the migrant, their "peasant" origins, and their struggles to find their feet -- plant new roots -- in American soil. Did Vanessa mean to infer a kind of transition from peasantry into... educated bourgeoisie? I don't know. I don't think so. I can't see it. But uprooted means something. Perhaps it is the violence of being separated from one's comfortable ideas, coming to terms with the deflation of an illusion; in Vanessa's case, of her fathers, her faith, her marriage, her trust in men, her color and all that "color" means as it is used to define us in others' eyes and as we use it to define ourselves.

This is a complex memoir, as complicated as Vanessa's personal history. It sprawls, but its many parts and tangents cohere to a single theme: Home Bound is about figuring out who your people are and realizing that we will not find a perfect fit in any community. We will belong in some ways, be alienated in others. Some times it is a matter of chronology; we belonged in the past, we cannot belong in the present. Sometimes we belong with strangers, sometimes those closest to us are not those who should have our trust. If I sound bleak, I do not mean to; Home Bound makes it clear that the journey -- perhaps for all of us -- is complicated -- and sometimes it really helps to see how someone else navigated it.

Home Bound is a profound, nuanced memoir well-worth the reading.

What a beautiful memoir. A journey of her finding “home”, belonging and being “othered”. Her style of writing is so poetic and you really get sucked into every place she lived (Cameroon, France, England and the US). I highly recommend it.

Home Bound is a memoir about identity with cross-cultural perspectives, and it is truly inspiring and honest. Vanessa has her roots in Cameroon, lived/s in France and the US, and became the youngest student in her class at Harvard Law School. I always enjoy stories about immigrants and how they find their way into new cultures, and this book shares a great touch on various themes without drowning emotions.