Turn Where

A probing essay collection that chronicles one woman’s complicated quest to find home in a fractured America, from the award-winning author of Field Study and contributor to Four Hundred Souls, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain

Where do I belong in a country that has never loved me? What does it mean to be an American?

Lauded poet and essayist Chet’la Sebree interrogates these questions as she traverses an America that has always had a fraught relationship with its Black citizens. Her journey takes her from the shores of the Atlantic to the prairies of the Midwest, to the forests of the Pacific Northwest, abroad, and then back again. Through these shifting landscapes, Sebree seamlessly weaves memoir with history and cultural criticism in a collection of essays bound by themes of movement, home, inheritance, and belonging.

Growing up in a family that would pile into the car for lengthy excursions, Sebree has always loved to travel; it's in her marrow. Once she left her parents' home in Delaware, she rarely kept an address for more than two years and was more comfortable with a suitcase and an itinerary than the idea of a mortgage and stillness of settling down. Her life as a writer, scholar, poet, and professor fed her hunger for exploration domestically and internationally while staving off the pang that she never quite felt at home anywhere. That latter fact became increasingly unsettling as she desired to put down roots—both for herself, and for the child she began to consider bringing into the world as a single mother.

Building on the work of scholars like Saidiya Hartman and Imani Perry, Sebree navigates her relationship to a place that was not made for her to survive, let alone thrive, as she dreams of new futures. In exploring this fracture, Sebree carves out space of her own through clear-eyed observations and fearless revelations.