IN THESE turbulent times, many of us are seeking answers, perspective, and hope. My own search led me to write, ‘Between Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora’. 

So do come on this journey with me and spend time with 12 remarkable people I’ve come to know who have traversed adversity to forge inspiring paths worthy of celebration. 

Historian David Olusoga describes the book as “extraordinary conversations with many of the greatest minds and most inspiring figures of our age”. 

The title Between Starshine and Clay is a line borrowed from Lucille Clifton’s poem Won’t You Celebrate with Me . Clifton’s poem speaks of survival through adversity and combines a blunt acknowledgement of how hard it is to survive, to forge one’s own path and yet to pull through and have cause to celebrate. 

The stories told here remind me, and I hope you too, that even when the road is rough, the human spirit can prevail. I’ve had the great privilege of getting to know the 12 people in this book, and this allowed me to go beyond their public profiles. Some, like Michelle Obama and Nobel Laureates Toni Morrison and Wole Soyinka, require little introduction, but there is a lot we discover together.  

There is beloved Margaret Busby, youngest-ever and first Black British woman publisher, dedicated public servant Lord Michael Hastings, and Evan Mawarire, a pastor turned electrifying activist who challenged a decades-long dictator and brought a nation to a standstill. 

The incomparable Prof Skip Gates, Anna Deavere Smith, Xoliswa Sithole, and Claudia Rankine. The one and only 104-year-young Willard Harris, a story and a life like no other. Two personal essays, containing reflections from my own life, bookend the collection. The first traces my experience of being seen as ‘oyinbo’ in Nigeria, African in England, Arab in France, coloured in Southern Africa and Black in America. 

The concluding essay is about an extraordinary trip I took to the South Pole, where amongst other things, I came to feel the least Black and most human among fellow travellers. 

Readers often comment on the intimacy of these stories – how they foster connection across borders and generations, and how they provide windows into a deeper and richer understanding of the world and the African diaspora; past, present, and future. 

If you get a chance to read this book, I know you will laugh, cry, stand up and cheer—not just for the 12 remarkable ones featured, but for the many more whose stories we can learn from, gain perspective and wisdom. will.i.am summed it up:

“A must read!2

Written by Sarah Ladipo Manyika

Lashana Lynch speaks on feeling Rita Marley’s energy, bringing Rasta to the screen and more