James Baldwin in Paris. Audre Lorde in the Soviet Union. Langston Hughes in Mexico. June Jordan in the Bahamas. While much of the black experience in America has been characterized by migration, most attention has been focused on the forced migration of the slave trade and the great migration from the South to northern cities. But there is a rich tradition of writing by African-Americans who have traveled abroad in search of new opportunities, political insight, pleasure, and adventure.From sailors to missionaries to leaders of nationalist movements, this unique collection documents a tradition of African-American travel writing through two centuries. It includes a nineteenth-century sailor's account of his amazing adventures along the Barbary Coast, then "the toughest place on earth", populated with "pirates, high-jackers, ex-slavers, and cut-throats"; the observations of Claude McKay on a newly formed Soviet Union; and Ntozake Shange's musings from Nicaragua on the power of Motown to overcome boundaries of language and custom.A rich, expansive collection, A Stranger in the Village offers new perspective on what it has meant to be a black American.