Tending to Our Wounds : A Diasporic Memoir

A courageous excavation of the deep wounds that racism and colonialism have left on Black people across borders, and an imaginative effort to care for oneself and one’s community in the wake.

Born in a close-knit Haitian enclave in Miami, Edna Bonhomme was raised to fight for her community—at first for their rights as immigrants, and then as part of the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements. Later, as an immigrant in Berlin, she encountered species of racism and of resistance that were new and different in some ways but fueled by the same legacy of colonial power.

With astute insight and immersive prose, Bonhomme outlines a personal and political history of life in the United States, Haiti, and Germany, discovering what it means to be Black at home and abroad. She unlearns the lies that she was told about slavery and colonialism and explores how communities are resisting the weight of centuries of history.

Whether thinking through debt, medical racism, art, or reparations, Tending to Our Wounds offers a case study on how to navigate between the past and the present, the individual and collective—identifying the tendrils of history in the everyday, and outlining a path to repair.