Title: Leaving Freedom to Find Peace: My Life’s Journey
Author: Donal H. Godfrey
Publisher: Glasslink Solutions
ASIN: 1983503975
Pages: 207
Genre: Memoir
Reviewed by: David Allen
Pacific Book Review
Those of us who are safe, privileged and lucky enough to reside in white majority communities in this divided nation really need to round out our perspectives with a book like this. Author Donal Godfrey’s heartbreaking memoir describes in painful detail what it was like growing up as a disaffiliated black child in America’s sprawling South.
Godfrey spent his tragic childhood in Jacksonville, Florida, where his innocent youth wasn’t spared the sight, sound or impact of violent hatred. The history books spell it out, but reading it straight from the heart and soul is another experience altogether. One of the many remarkable features of this book is Godfrey’s brilliant ability to compartmentalize and thus understand his experience, and make it accessible and beyond that actually comprehensible to his readers.
His handling of the vicious bigotry which came down during those years – and still comes down now – is nothing short of remarkable. Godfrey is somehow able in this book to dispassionately describe the crude machinations of the hate-freighted Klansmen who bombed his childhood home. The bomb was payback for Godfrey’s only crime: trying to attend an all-white school. Godfrey’s response to this signal traumatic event was at least two-fold, he processed the experience, serving it up in this palatable account of a forever unpalatable episode. Having done that, he then made a personal decision to remove himself later in life from this tormented land. He moved to Ghana.
He moved to Ghana, but not before committing himself to this labor of research and love. Leaving Freedom to Find Peace: My Life’s Journey is not only a personal account; it is a necessary account. Godfrey not only succeeds in bringing alive the struggles of his family and community, but he resurrects the larger historical struggles of black people in this country as well. He reminds us that black people have been on the receiving end of slavery, abuse and discrimination for centuries. He is a crafty historian, able to indelibly portray the mostly heroic journeys of Black Muslims, the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and others. Boxing fans will also enjoy the sidelights on Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay, a.k.a. Muhammed Ali. Godfrey contributed mightily to the defense and dignity of this country which is not unusual, since black military men and women have been doing this since 1776. He was a Navy submarine radioman and served seventeen years in the Coast Guard.
Leaving Freedom to Find Peace: My Life’s Journey is an important addition to the growing library of memoir, memory and memento mori that paradoxically has made our nation great. This treasure of a book comes at a uniquely relevant time. So long as we hope to understand where the national divisiveness, scapegoating and racism come from, books like this will occupy an important place on our bookshelves.
