Black American women's roots travel

Abstract

This article examines Black American women's roots travel throughout the African diaspora between 2000 and 2023. By analyzing interviews with travelers alongside roots travel memoirs, this study shows how such travel responds to historical dislocation and U.S. inequities. The trips are characterized by an expansive quest for felt knowledge, transhistorical connection, familiar sights, and belonging. For Black American women, roots travel has ambiguous results. The trips can facilitate pleasurable affects and fleeting connections. At the same time, such travel rarely results in conclusive findings about one's heritage. As a result, travelers embrace and create small spaces of belonging, adopt the identity of permanent traveler, or find power in occupying the margins.