The title and author of this book may seem familiar to you it’s because you have. A few week ago I interviewed author T.K. McLennon for our Author Spotlight Series and she talked about TrailBlasian.
I also received a copy of the book and promised to be back with a review once I’d had the chance to read it.
TrailBlasianis an anthology of seventeen black women including the author who relocated to Asia from different parts of the world.
They have a couple of similar things in common, one being that they are women and two that they are women of color. The third which serves as the focal point of the stories is the fact that at some point in their lives they all packed their belongings and relocated to Asia.
Some ventured off solo and others with their families. McLennon took to the internet to vet these stories and while there are women who travelled from different parts of the globe a majority of them are from where McLennon originates, Canada.
The book is divided into sections called ‘pathways’ which serve as the particular topic the women discuss in their stories about their move. They range from finances, to love, to experiencing natural disasters like earthquakes while living in Japan and even accidents.
Kelsey Cienna Aguirre’s story about the Japanese earthquake she experienced stuck with me. I imagined being in a place that was home but technically not since my immediate family wasn’t there and experiencing the threat of a natural disaster and the possibility of a Tsunami. It’s one thing to see it on the news but to be in the middle of it seemed pretty frightening.
T.K. McLennon’s story focuses on her vacation that almost wasn’t to be though it wound up being totally different than what she’s planned.
In all this is an entertaining combination of short stories that’s really different and a breath of fresh air not only in the sense that it’s from the perspective of women of color but because it’s always interesting to see and read the journey’s that people take and how they may perceive things in a foreign land versus how a native or someone else visiting would perceive it.
You can purchase a copy of “TrailBlasian” on Amazon.com. Be sure to come back and let me know your thoughts. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the tales from Thailand, China, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea as much as I did.
You can read my intereview with T.K. Mclennon here.
