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Published Oct 2022
256 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
In this singular and intimate memoir of identity and discovery, Vanessa A. Bee explores the way we define "home" and "belonging" — from her birth in Yaoundé, Cameroon, to her adoption by her aunt and her aunt's white French husband, to experiencing housing insecurity in Europe and her eventual immigration to the US.
After her parents' divorce, Vanessa traveled with her mother to Lyon and later to London, eventually settling in Reno, Nevada, as a teenager, right around the financial crisis and the collapse of the housing market. At twenty, still a practicing evangelical Christian and newly married, Vanessa applied to and was accepted by Harvard Law School, where she was one of the youngest members of her class. There, she forged a new belief system, divorced her husband, left the church, and, inspired by her tumultuous childhood, pursued a career in economic justice upon graduation.
Vanessa's adoptive, multiracial, multilingual, multinational, and transcontinental upbringing has caused her to 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 unconventionally 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.
"Bee, a consumer-protection lawyer and essayist, traces her diffuse family tree in this tender and captivating exploration of the meaning of home...What emerges is a rich and enthralling story of finding oneself outside of the bounds of borders and beliefs. This offers radiant hope in the face of darkness." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Bee's lyrical, emotive prose takes readers through her life with an intimacy that draws and keeps them close...[Home Bound will] appeal to a variety of reader, challenging singular beliefs of what it means to be a daughter, sister, lover, wife, lawyer, and mother." - Library Journal (starred review)
"[T]his richly tapestried memoir offers a unique perspective on identity as it restlessly probes the nature of belonging. An intimately incisive life story." - Kirkus Reviews
"A hopeful, complicated, political, and, at times, devastating book. Vanessa resurrects stories from the deep crevices of her memory with ease, honesty, and a boundless capacity for empathy. Her preternatural talent for storytelling and her astute analysis have produced a book that manages to exceed the constraints of the memoir genre. I raced through the story, blown away by the depths of Vanessa's experience and her adeptness in recounting it. You have never read anything quite like Home Bound — a remarkable, captivating story that I've already begun recommending to everyone." - Josie Duffy Rice, journalist, writer, and co-host of "What A Day"
"A remarkable portrayal of daughterhood, Home Bound will reshape and expand your definition of belonging. In exquisite, captivating prose, Vanessa A. Bee charts her journey within a sprawling yet tight-knit family across three continents. She is a deeply empathetic writer who weaves intimate details alongside profound insights, and often moved me to tears. Moments after turning the last page, I started reading all over again—a rare impulse reserved only for my favorite books." - Sanaë Lemoine, author of The Margot Affair
"Home Bound is a mesmerizing, globe-spanning story of forgiveness, resilience, and love. Vanessa A. Bee writes with vulnerability, honesty, and fierce intelligence about the intricacies of home, identity, and belonging. A wise and gripping debut." - Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin
This information about Home Bound was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Vanessa A. Bee is a consumer protection lawyer and essayist. Born in Cameroon, she grew up in France, England, and the United States. Vanessa holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Nevada and a law degree from Harvard. She lives in Washington, DC.
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