Ebony Walden particulars the transformative energy of journey

Recounting the experiences of an around-the-world journey, writer and poet Ebony Walden’s new memoir, Where I’m From: A Poetic Journey Across Five Continents, engages deeply together with her childhood in New York, in addition to points of her time in Charlottesville. 

Before transferring to Charlottesville for graduate research in city planning, Walden grew up in Queens and Long Island. “My home was filled with love and support … but still marred by poverty—water being cut off, winters without heat,” she writes. “Scarcity had shaped me. I knew how to survive, but … survival isn’t the same as freedom.” In Where I’m From, Walden grapples with these experiences, making which means from her previous in addition to the journey that in the end took her to 17 nations over the course of eight months in 2010 to 2011.

“I was not trying to write about my past at all,” says Walden. “But those were the things that came up as I was writing. In memoir, your goal is to find the story under the story. The larger story is I went around the world. But … the most interesting part is what you learn about me.”

Engaging assist from her religion group, household, and associates, she crowdfunded the journey, pitching it because the Poetic Justice World Tour. Her plan was to backpack and volunteer her approach world wide, participating with the individuals she met by a “Where I’m From” fill-in-the-blank poem template alongside the best way.

“The lens for me going on the trip was trying to find the beauty and the brokenness in the world, and then to find the beauty in the brokenness,” displays Walden. “I’ve got to be strong to get through this very dynamic but trying situation, but I also have to learn to be soft and vulnerable. I have to both plan but then let go of my plans. I have to learn how to be present because that is all the trip is asking of me.” 

Her inventive work displays this dynamic as properly. “When I read my poems from before that trip, they’re very didactic,” Walden says. “And I think that’s what I tried to communicate: strong, confident, self-assured person. … And then I read the poems I wrote on the trip and after the trip, and I’m writing from a vulnerable place.”

Throughout Where I’m From, Walden engages by the twin lens of race and gender, navigating tensions between her experiences within the U.S. and overseas, residing and touring as a Black American lady, in addition to in reference to different individuals she meets. “I think the trip was a precursor to [realizing that] I can engage with people about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and about culture, because I’ve literally crossed 50 cultures myself and had to navigate with privilege,” she says. “Of course, in the U.S., I’m a quote-unquote minority. I’m not part of the dominant group racially or as a woman. But I go around the world and I have passport privilege, educational privilege, and financial privilege.”

Traveling in Central and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, Walden confronted challenges starting from damaged baggage and altitude illness to bronchitis and dental points, however she additionally linked with individuals about their deepest sorrows and their most significant joys. She tried native delicacies, went paragliding, virtually acquired arrested, and carried out at open mic nights. 

“I was trying to have a dynamic experience that I could capture and try to figure out what it wanted to become after I did that,” Walden remembers. And writing a memoir wasn’t initially a part of that plan. Though she shared her journey by a group exhibit at CityArea, it wasn’t till 2014 that Walden took her first memoir writing class by WriterHouse as a approach to extra absolutely seize her journey experiences. She then took a two-year memoir intensive with author Sharon Harrigan, throughout which she workshopped what would grow to be Where I’m From. 

Even then, Walden says, “I didn’t enter any of those classes thinking that I was going to publish a memoir. … The trip was ego-shattering for me. But it was also an extraordinary journey.” 

She shelved an preliminary draft of the total e-book across the finish of 2017 to be able to concentrate on launching her enterprise, Ebony Walden Consulting, a racial equity-focused consulting agency, and creator of “Black Beyond Borders,” a documentary sequence exploring the African diaspora. Though she now lives in Richmond, Walden is a former City of Charlottesville neighborhood planner and founding father of Charlottesville’s WordSmith Poetry Jam. 

In 2024, whereas engaged on a proposal for one more challenge, Walden returned to her draft—and it felt like her story was able to share. 

Walden writes, “[This book] has become much more than a recounting of my adventures—it is an homage to the transformative power of travel, a call to dream out loud and embark on the journey of self-discovery that lies within each of us.”

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