Black Girl from Pyongyang is a fascinating memoir. Monica Macias tells her extraordinary story of growing up as the daughter of an Equatoguinean president, sent to North Korea as a child in the 1980s and raised there through her teenage years. What struck me most was her honest, unsentimental account of navigating between two vastly different worlds - the privilege and isolation of her unusual upbringing, and the profound loneliness of being separated from her family. She writes with such grace about identity, belonging, and resilience, never falling into self-pity despite the obvious challenges. It's a perspective on North Korea we rarely hear, and her story is both deeply personal and historically fascinating. I found myself thinking about it long after I'd finished - it's one of those books that really stays with you.
The extraordinary true story of a West African girl's upbringing in North Korea under the guardianship of President Kim Il Sung.
In 1979, aged only seven, Monica Macias was sent from West Africa to the unfamiliar surroundings of North Korea by her father, the President of Equatorial Guinea, to be educated under the guardianship of his ally, Kim Il Sung.
Within months, her father was executed in a military coup; her mother became unreachable. Effectively orphaned, she and two siblings had to make their life in Pyongyang. At military boarding school, Monica learned to mix with older children, speak fluent…
I thoroughly enjoyed this biography, written by Joanna Moorhead, who is actually Carrington's cousin, and thus she brings such warmth and intimacy to this portrait of the rebellious British artist who fled her wealthy family to join the Surrealists in Paris, then later made Mexico her home. What I loved most was how Moorhead doesn't just focus on Carrington's famous relationship with Max Ernst, but gives us the full sweep of her remarkable life - her art, her writing, her fierce independence, and her refusal to be defined by anyone else's expectations. Carrington comes across as brilliant, difficult, magical, and very much herself. The book captures the wildness of her imagination and her determination to live life on her own terms, right up until her death at 94. I love to read about creative women forging their own path and during a time when such behavior was considered almost brazen - what an extraordinary woman she was!
In 2006 journalist Joanna Moorhead discovered that her father's cousin, Prim, who had disappeared many decades earlier, was now a famous artist in Mexico. Although rarely spoken of in her own family (regarded as a black sheep, a wild child; someone they were better off without) in the meantime Leonora Carrington had become a national treasure in Mexico, where she now lived, while her paintings are fetching ever-higher prices at auction today.
Intrigued by her story, Joanna set off to Mexico City to find her lost relation. Later she was to return to Mexico ten times more between then and…
Journey into the Mind's Eye is a dreamy memoir that's quite unlike anything else I've read. Lesley Blanch weaves together her lifelong obsession with Russia - sparked by a mysterious figure who came to stay with her family when she was a child. She calls him 'The Traveller' and he filled her childhood with tales of the exotic East - encouraging her own eventual travels there. It's part memoir, part travelogue, part love letter to a Russia that may seems more imagined than real. Blanch's prose is romantic and evocative, and she captures that peculiar longing we sometimes feel for places we've never been. It's not a straightforward read - it meanders and drifts like a conversation with a fascinating older woman over tea - but that's precisely its charm. Perfect for anyone who loves armchair travel and beautifully written nostalgia.
Lesley Blanch was four when the mysterious Traveller first blew into her nursery, swathed in Siberian furs and full of the fairytales of Russia. She was twenty when he swept out of her life, leaving her love-lorn and in the grips of a passionate obsession. The search to recapture the love of her life, and the Russia he had planted within her, takes her to Siberia and beyond, journeying deep into the romantic terrain of the mind's eye.
Part travel book, part love story, Lesley Blanch's Journey into the Mind's Eye is pure intoxication.
Women Who Walk: How 20 Women from 16 Countries Came to Live in Portugal is a collection of 20 interviews with a diverse group of expatriate women. Their personal narratives tell tales of world travel and cultural immersion as a form of higher education, a vehicle for personal growth and expanded awareness of self and others, and an instrument for greater understanding and appreciation of the differences that today too often separate us. Readers will find these shared experiences, communicated honestly and openly, sometimes with humor, sometimes through tears of loss, courageous, uplifting, poignant and inspirational, a reassuring reflection of their own life journey.
