"I don't mean to be Racist but …" Home and the Politics of Belonging

Abstract: How do feminists of Africa write and experience home? I was born, raised, and educated in Cameroon and Canada but have lived and taught at institutions of higher learning in the United States for almost three decades. To the outside world, I am an accomplished, privileged academic and rightly so, but multiple aspects of my identity as an African-woman-academic are often challenged in interactions that engender a continual negotiation of nationality, gender, race, and class. In this creative non-fiction essay, I explore how I employ the privilege of mobility, migration, and transnational experiences to challenge fixed notions of space and place, of home and belonging.