Guidebook to Relative Strangers

Allyson Johnson narrates the poet Dungy's lyrical examinations of motherhood, race, history, language, and the natural world with gravity. However, the author's stories of the delightful antics of her young daughter, Callie, are read with a welcome lightness. As Dungy weaves historical and personal insights into her essays on raising and traveling with Callie, Johnson guides listeners as they meander from remote towns in Maine and Alaska to slave castles in Ghana. Johnson reads with the requisite seriousness as Dungy depicts how traveling as a black woman with a young child seems to invite unending scrutiny, advice, praise, and personal stories from those she meets along the way. Listeners will appreciate Johnson's use of tone and accents to differentiate these relative strangers. E.E.C. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine