A Stranger's Journey

To take honest stock of ourselves and to place our experience within the larger world, this is the task of the ideal writer, work that is made harder in a literary and political climate created to validate the experiences of certain numbers at the expense of excluding and denying even the existence of others of us. David Mura faces this challenge head-on and gives us a book that is essential reading for anyone who considers the writer's art a serious, and sacred, opportunity to transform the world. A Stranger's Journey speaks to writers and teachers willing to embrace the task of complicating our idealized version of reality and who want to push themselves, and others, to face ‘the blemishes and blasphemies’ of our lives with clarity and passion. Mura takes his place among an illustrious group of spirit guides, from Baldwin to Danticat, from Naipaul to Diaz, in showing us exactly how to construct the requisite tools in order to dismantle the master's house.

* author of On Sal Mal Lane *

Upon finishing this book, I think that we will no longer be strangers. We will no longer feel that we are on our journey alone. This book is the intersection where our paths meet, where we can forge bonds that transcend the racial divide. Maybe from here on out, we can accompany each other on our journeys as friends and fellow artists, but most importantly, as fellow humans.

* author of The Distance Between Us *

“A Stranger’s Journey is an essential work of literary criticism and memoir, challenging readers and writers alike to think about writing, race, and identity in new ways."

* Foreword Reviews *

David Mura’s A Stranger’s Journey is a new kind of literary criticism—personal, postcolonial, analytic and dramatic—his insights into the situation of the writer of color amidst centrist assumptions and prohibitions open a new field of critical and creative thinking woven together in a book that could have been called ‘Castiglione’s The Courtier Meets Sun-tzu’s Art of War.’

* ALSCW Council member *

[This] creative writing book for people of color, which means white people should be reading this & using this, too. Hits all the major problems around race/identity in the teaching of writing.

* Thread Reader *

I highly recommend reading David’s important book. It challenges us to think critically about the way we teach craft and its crucial relationship to identity. I learned a lot from it and was really inspired by the content.

One of the strengths of A Stranger’s Journey is that it is not only about race and identity, but also is a practical craft guide centered in questions of story, structure, and technique as applied to exemplar texts of diverse writers of both fiction and nonfiction.

* Kenyon Revi