Growing Up Different by Bonjenji

Book excerpt: Born in 1918 at Bolenge in the Belgian Congo, the daughter of American missionaries, Bonjenji (Erva Zuckerman) experiences two very different worlds as she grows up in the era between two World Wars. By the time she is twelve, she will say goodbye to Africa and travel around the world, arriving in Washington, D.C. in 1931. Her parents look forward to going home, but she is leaving the only home she has ever known-her beloved Bolenge. "With clarity and simplicity, Erva Zuckerman leads us through the amazing first twenty years of her long life, from schoolwork on a screened porch by the Congo to social work in New York City. On the epic journey from there to here, her father, a missionary doctor, drove the family in a truck-which broke down and was put back together, it seems, almost daily-across Africa from west to east. From there we follow the family around the world to America, where Erva aspires to find her place as she comes of age during the Depression years. Rich in detail and unaffected in its style, the book reflects the personality of the author, as aptly described in her high school yearbook: 'Thoughtless of beauty, she is beauty's self.'" -Martha Heyneman, author of The Breathing Cathedral and The Productions of Time