A review by nicole_roccas
A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins

5.0

This was a re-read for me, having first encountered the book when I was in middle school in my dad's book collection. Pulling the book off my book shelf this week was like walking back in time, back to my teenage self. Then as now, I empathized with the author's struggle to make sense of America. It is both sad and unsurprising to see how many of the author's struggles remain current to today's discourses--racial inequality, poverty, crime, and prejudice. I read the book now as someone who no longer lives in the US, and this added a new layer to the experience of the book compared to the first time I read it. Like Jenkins' walk across America, my own journey(s) as an adult have given me a deeper sense not only of the complicated legacy that comes with being an American citizen abroad, but the importance of distance and engagement in making sense of larger struggles for identity and belonging. Yes, there are some anachronisms that I doubt would have made it into a book today (e.g. Jenkins' frequently refers to a family he spent a mere 3 mos renting from as his "black family." No comment.) Still, his book maps the complicated, beautiful, and human topography of the US in perennially personal contours.