76. Instructions For Travelling West | Joy Sullivan

poems

Apr 27, 2024

Friends,

I’ve been waiting almost 5 months for this book of poetry to publish and it was well worth the wait! Joy’s poems reminded me a little of these, which I loved too, and if this description from GoodReads resonates, then I’m sure you’ll feel the same:

‘A book for anyone flinging themselves into fresh starts, Instructions for Traveling West grapples with loss, loneliness and belonging. These poems teach us that naming our desire is profound alchemy. Each of us holds the power to set our own course forward.’

Joy spent her childhood in the Central African Republic (C.A.R.), the child of medical missionaries, bound tight by evangelicalism and purity culture — until they were forced to flee in 19961. Joy weaves this early African childhood into her poems, as well as the shock and trauma she felt moving back to Ohio as essentially a white African child.

As far as childhoods go, mine was pretty weird. My dad was a missionary doctor who bounced around internationally until he finally took a head of surgery position in the Central African Republic (C.A.R). There my memory begins—or at least where the lights switch on and the music begins to play.

I was a strange creature in that world. Blonde, blue-eyed with stubby legs and a knack for sunburns. Under the dubious and problematic circumstances of being a missionary kid, I was caught in a country I had no right to love. In many ways, I wish I’d been born there. Maybe then I’d have some excuse for the relentless bond I felt with the land.

A few of my favourite poems from the collection: