Searching For Zion

Searching For Zion is a non-fiction memoir published in 2013 by the American writer Emily Raboteau. It chronicles Raboteau's effort to find a home she can call her own. Her travels take her to Israel, Jamaica, Ghana, Ethiopia, are other far-flung locales. A mixed-race child of a black father and a white mother, Raboteau discusses her travels and search for identity primarily through the lens of American racism and the African diaspora. In fact, the book is subtitled The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora. In a review, The Washington Post calls the book an "informative, heartfelt and sometimes maddening memoir."

Raboteau begins the book with an evocative and fitting quote from African-American novelist James Baldwin, found in his novel, Giovanni's Room: "You don't have a home until you leave it." Technically, Raboteau's home is Princeton, New Jersey, where she was born to a white mother and a black father. Despite the fact that she dedicates the book to her mother, the book is far more focused on her rocky relationship with her father, a Professor of Religion at Princeton University who separated from her mother when Raboteau was sixteen. As a mixed-race child who could frequently pass for white, Raboteau writes that she felt "never quite black enough or entirely too black." She later adds that "I was blackish in a land where one is expected to be one thing or the other."

Raboteau's travels begin in Israel where she reunites with a childhood friend named Tamar. Under the 1950 Law of Return, any Jew has a right to immigrate to Israel and become an Israeli citizen. Raboteau, meanwhile, feels so disconnected from her home and identity that rather than saying she is "American," she simply states, "I'm from New York," because that's where her permanent home is located. Therefore, she is naturally envious of what Tamar has found in Israel, writing, "While I continued to feel unsettled, Tamar now had a divine Promised Land, a place to belong, and a people who embraced her...And here she was in Zion."



Also while in Israel, Raboteau is excited to discover black communities of Jews. She interacts with Ethiopian Jews who used to call themselves "Falashas," which means "landless" or "wanderers." But before long, this became used as a derogatory label by non-African Jews. As a result, they now call themselves Beta Israel. The dispute over their label reveals the struggles Jews of color often experience when attempting to assimilate into Israeli society. Raboteau also encounters the African Hebrew Israelites who live primarily in the city of Dimona, located in the Negev desert. Most of these families are of African-American descent, having converted to Judaism and immigrated to Israeli from Chicago, Illinois in the 1960s.

Eager to find her own Zion, Raboteau embarks on a journey around the world that would cover the next ten years of her life. She travels to Jamaica where she attempts to immerse herself in Rastafarianism, a religion and culture that is Afrocentric and frequently argues for members of the African diaspora to resettle Africa. She is quickly turned off, however, by the rampant homophobia she discovers among a number of Rasta followers. She implies that she is foolish and naive to expect that it will be easy to find a home. Nevertheless, the excitement and rapid betrayal she feels when experiencing Rasta culture is maddening to her. Raboteau writes, "I was profoundly disappointed, like a child who'd been deceived by her teacher...I wanted to topple the card table, smash the radio, and throw a tantrum."

Next, Raboteau travels to Africa. In Ethiopia, she meets a number of black Americans and Europeans who have "repatriated" themselves to the home of their ancestors. The same is true in Ghana. One of them who wants to go home tells Raboneau, "Ghana attracts a lot of dreamers. Funny thing, since this country is so inhospitable to dreams." In Ghana, she is initially in denial about the fact that slavery still exists there. Especially around Lake Volta, children are sold into forced labor to work on dangerous fishing boats. The trip improves, however, when she meets Rita Marley, the widow of the reggae star Bob Marley, who provides her with some much needed perspective about her journey.



In the end, Raboteau realizes her search may have far more to do with the estrangement of her father than she was willing to admit at the beginning of the book. In other words, Searching For Zion doesn't provide many easy answers, but it does provide an enlightening trip through the African diaspora.