What the Oceans Remember, Sonja Boon
What the Oceans Remember, Sonja Boon
List: $34.99 | Sale: $24.50
Club: $17.49

What the Oceans Remember
Searching for Belonging and Home

Author: Sonja Boon

Narrator: Ryanne Chisholm

Unabridged: 9 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/27/2020

Synopsis

Sonja Boon’s heritage is complicated. Although she has lived in Canada for more than 30 years, she was born in the UK to a Surinamese mother and a Dutch father. An invitation to join a family tree project inspired a journey to the heart of the histories that have shaped her identity, as she sought to answer two questions that have dogged her over the years: Where does she belong? And who does she belong to?
Boon’s archival research—in Suriname, the Netherlands, the UK, and Canada—brings her opportunities to reflect on the possibilities and limitations of the archives themselves, the tangliness of oceanic migration, histories, the meaning of legacy, music, love, freedom, memory, ruin, and imagination. Ultimately, she reflected on the relevance of our past to understanding our present.
Deeply informed by archival research and current scholarship, but written as a reflective and intimate memoir, What the Oceans Remember addresses current issues in migration, identity, belonging, and history through an interrogation of race, ethnicity, gender, archives and memory. More importantly, it addresses the relevance of our past to understanding our present. It shows the multiplicity of identities and origins that can shape the way we understand our histories and our own selves.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Michelle on July 10, 2019

What does it mean to search for identity—to crave the knowledge of not just who you are but where you came from? In her memoir, What The Oceans Remember, Sonja Boon guides us through an emotional search for belonging and identity. She draws us into the heart of a dedicated professor in search of her......more

Goodreads review by Christine on July 23, 2021

It was interesting to learn about archieval work and the history the author uncovered, but much of the book was her inner dialogue and I had hoped for a bit more. All in all, it's a lovely journey to uncover a family history through records of slavery: both of the enslaved and enslavers.......more

Goodreads review by Ashley on March 27, 2021

A wonderful story of family history spanning multiple continents and several generations. "Wonderful" because author Sonja Boon has a uniquely conversational tone that makes you feel as though you're sitting with her after she's emerged from one of her full days at the archive, faced buried in centu......more

Goodreads review by Jane on May 08, 2020

A beautifully written book by a Canadian raised in the prairies, living in Newfoundland, married to a man from the Faroe Islands. She was born in England, with a father who was Dutch, and her mother was from Suriname or Dutch Guyana, with heritage from Africa, India and China as well as Europe. Some......more

Goodreads review by John on October 26, 2021

I found this to be a fascinating book. Sonja Boon tells the story of trying to find out the stories of her very multi-cultural heritage. Sonja Boon is Canadian and teaches in Newfoundland, but was born in England and considered herself of Dutch and Surinamese heritage. Her blood lines include slaves......more

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