Traveling Without Moving, Taiyon J. Coleman
Traveling Without Moving, Taiyon J. Coleman
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Traveling Without Moving
Essays from a Black Woman Trying to Survive in America

Author: Taiyon J. Coleman

Narrator: Keyonni James

Unabridged: 5 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/04/2024


Synopsis

Amid the White smiles of Minnesota Nice and the Minnesota Paradox—the insidious racism of an ostensibly inclusive place to live—what do you do? If you're Taiyon J. Coleman, you write.

In Traveling without Moving, Coleman shares intimate essays from her life: her childhood in Chicago—growing up in poverty with four siblings and a single mother—and the empowering decision to leave her first marriage. She writes about being the only Black student in a prestigious and predominantly White creative writing program, about institutional racism and implicit bias in writing instruction, about the violent legacies of racism in the US housing market, about the maternal health disparities seen across the country and their implication in her own miscarriage. She explores what it means to write her story and that of her family—an act at once a responsibility and a privilege—bringing forth the inherent contradictions between American ideals and Black reality.

Using a powerful blend of perspectives that move between a first-person lens of lived experience and a wider-ranging critique of US culture, policy, and academia, Coleman's writing evinces how a Black woman in America is always on the run, always Harriet Tubman, traveling with her babies in tow, seeking safety, desperate to survive, thrive, and finally find freedom.

About Taiyon J. Coleman

Taiyon J. Coleman is a poet, writer, and educator whose work has been anthologized widely. A Cave Canem and VONA fellow, she is a 2017 recipient of a McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship in Creative Prose and is one of twelve emerging children's writers of color selected as a recipient of the 2018-2019 Mirrors and Windows Fellowship funded by the Loft Literary Center and the Jerome Foundation in Minnesota. She is associate professor of English and women's studies at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Maileen on May 10, 2024

The personal is sociopolitical. Taiyon J. Coleman’s “Traveling Without Moving” is a collection of first-person essays that provides an intricate portrait of a Black woman’s experience of survival in interrelated spheres of oppression in American institutions. Coleman is a first-generation college gr......more

Goodreads review by Patty on November 10, 2024

As I read this collection of very personal stories, I am reminded of the privilege we have to live in a beautiful state such as Minnesota, and at the same time I am horrified by the inequities that continue to exist. I remember having some of these conversations with a dear professor at Bemidji Stat......more

Goodreads review by Ann on January 24, 2025

I sometimes forget what it's like to read a book of essays. It's easy, especially as an audiobook to treat the essays like chapters in a book, but they aren't. This was a good mental stretch for me to read the essays. It was sad to read the reflections of discrimination Taiyon experienced in MN. The......more

Goodreads review by Jocelyn on August 20, 2024

This powerful memoir weaves personal experience and memorable storytelling together with policy, cultures, and systems designed to help some be successful and some not so much. Coleman is a wordsmith and knows how to lean in to craft and style -- sometimes using nuanced language as a way to make her......more

Goodreads review by Alexandra on February 23, 2025

An excellent read, much appreciated as an educator and health care provider amidst the “MN nice”. I will recommend this to friends and colleagues. Thank you to the author for the generosity in sharing personal stories as a call to action and curiosity for those partaking in structures that keep the......more