My Pisces Heart

Starred review from September 15, 2024
This first memoir from Neal, author of the novel Notes on Her Color (2023), takes both astrology and personal experience as foundations on which to provide a detailed, nuanced, researched, historically important account of systemic racism in the many places the author has sought to make a home. This relatable, important book stretches readers' understanding of nationalism into globalism and of home into a complex concept for those whose homes create racialized harm. The opening and closing chapters consider Neal's grandfather, who made a life in central Florida. Of the U.S. (""a nation-state"") and America (""an idea""), Neal writes, ""I live between those two equally significant realities, knowing that the same austere jingoism that would have kept me tied to that place has kept me invested in its redemption--from a distance."" Duality of experience is a theme that Neal examines in Japan, where she is presented with skin-whitening cream; in Chicago, where the myths of a North more progressive than the South fall apart; in Australia, where her romance erodes beneath her fianc�'s family's racism; and in Germany, where Nazi ideology can still turn a train ride terrifying. Readers of Neal's book will be challenged in the best of ways.

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October 1, 2024
A first-person examination of immigration, racism, and oppression around the world. Neal, author of the novelNotes on Her Color, has traveled to more than 40 countries, where, she writes, "race and gender have never failed to be a factor in how I was contextualized, and how I in turn investigated my surroundings." Her family moved every several years due to her father's banking job. One result of her peripatetic childhood was the habit of discarding gifts from friends in other places so as not to feel attached. The book is divided into four parts, each dedicated to a country in which the author has lived as an adult. The sections are prefaced with brief looks at her astrological chart, e.g., "A standout characteristic of those born under the sun sign of Aquarius is their unwillingness to follow the beaten track." Part 1 takes place in Kudamatsu, Japan, where Neal teaches English for a year. In addition to detailing various aspects of Japan's history of racism, the author recalls being gifted a basket of skin-bleaching product. She then relocates to Chicago to study art; there, she experiences "white-liberalism shock. White-everything shock." This is followed by eight years in Australia, where she moves after falling in love with an older white man she meets online. Neal recounts mixed reactions to their interracial relationship--"Love seemed to be the last thing on anyone's mind except for mine." The final section takes place in Berlin, where the author has lived since 2016. Neal's writing can sometimes be dry, but her questing narrative is driven by this powerful point: "Black life enriches every corner of the world. More importantly, Black lifedeserves to exist in any part of the world, for no reason whatsoever." A welcome and fresh perspective on global travel.

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