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Nancy Henderson-James


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Nancy Henderson-James’ defining childhood years were spent in Angola, Africa where her parents were missionaries. Every five years the family spent a year in the United States. Her book, At Home Abroad: An American Girl in Africa, covers the happy, confusing, carefree, angry years between 7 and 21, a time when children clarify their identities, and when she worked out her allegiances to Angola and America. Coming to the US in 1961, she found a home in the civil rights, women’s, and anti-war movements, and a way to define herself as American.

She was educated at Carleton College and Pratt Institute, and worked as a librarian for 30 years. She has written essays and compiled Africa Lives in My Soul, based on a survey of missionary kids. A chapter of At Home Abroad was published in Unrooted Childhoods. She received honors from the Southern Women Writers Conference and the North Carolina Writers’ Network. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.

At Home Abroad

Nancy Henderson-James
Plain View Press (2009)
ISBN 9780911051674
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (01/09) 

Read the review on ReaderViews.com

Synopsis: At Home Abroad: An American Girl in Africa goes to the heart of growing up inside and outside a culture. It is a story of how a child born to American missionary parents and a transient intercontinental and intercultural life, struggled to find her homeplace: spiritually, geographically, and emotionally. The theme of wanting to belong, connect, and be anchored runs throughout the book.

The book covers the author's life in southern Africa from ages seven to twenty-one (1952 to 1966). The story includes an ocean voyage complete with fairy magic and the anguish of a sailor's sudden death. It ends with the return, after a five-year absence, to war-torn Angola. It explores the conflicts raised by going away from home to school at age nine, the disruptions to family life brought about by the constant presence of guests in our house, the question of which among the many surrounding cultures she belonged to, and the bewilderment of fitting into, at ages twelve and sixteen, an America scarcely interested in her African life.