NDG book review: “Traveling Without Moving” is a surprisingly quick read

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

One step forward, two steps back.

Here’s how it goes: Every time you think you’re making a little progress, something – or someone – pulls you back. You see a little light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s a pull. It feels like you can’t win, but what can you do? You can’t give up. As in the new book, Traveling without Moving by Taiyon J. Coleman, you just have to keep going.

Like most black children born after Martin Luther King’s assassination, Taiyon Coleman was “expected to be the fulfillment of… generations of struggle…” At age 8, she hoped she would make it as a writer (“I just knew I had a lot… to write”), but it didn’t work out: She ran out of patience and candy after her first attempt. Living on Chicago’s South Side, the second oldest of five children with a single mother, Coleman knew even then that writing would be a struggle, but she never gave up on that dream.

As a child, Coleman cared for her younger siblings during the school year and helped her mother with household chores, who barely made a living and died far too young. Every summer, Coleman and her oldest sister were sent to live with their grandparents in Illinois, near St. Louis. It was hot there, but she was able to run around and play with her cousins ​​and other “relatives.” These annual trips, she says, became a kind of pedigree for her development. Her mother contributed to the many advances, especially as Coleman came to understand her mother’s hard life and sacrifices.

When it came time to choose a graduate program, Coleman visited a college in Alabama and saw Confederate flags everywhere, marked on the map, the racism she endured in college in Minnesota, the unfortunate miscarriage caused by more racism, being the only black family on the block in her Minnesota neighborhood, being told that her use of black slang would prevent her from being published…
The last thing. Now you almost want to say “HA!”, don’t you think? And you will, for more than one reason, when you read “Traveling Without Moving.”

Because here’s the thing: Author Taiyon J. Coleman is funny, taking readers from the living room of her grandmother and Coleman’s spirited, foul-mouthed eight-year-old self; to a time when she’s a teacher, a writer, and a mother of three; and in between laughing at Rush Limbaugh. And yet the humor is just icing on the cake: The better parts of this collection of autobiographical essays are the razor-sharp commentary and observations of life as a working black American when white America wouldn’t give up on the 1930s. This is told with proudly displayed irony and sarcasm, which masks the anger a little and delights readers even in the most seething moments.

You’ll also particularly enjoy Coleman’s style: it’s colloquial with lots of asides, like you’re chatting with a friend – but it’s also very serious, and you’ll like that too. Traveling without Moving is a quick and engaging read.