An odyssey across continents, ancestry, and self-discovery.
* Advance Reader Copies for 2026-2027
What traces of Africa remain in descendants of the enslaved? Can severed ties be mended 400 years on, or are the barriers of language, culture, and ideology too great to overcome?
The Jollof Journey is Décoste’s attempt to answer these questions in a memoir that bridges borders and generations.
The Jollof Journey explores themes of identity, belonging, and transformation. For readers who love stories that weave the personal with the historical, and the intimate with the global.
Positioned alongside works from other Black writers who blend comedy and identity, this book invites reflection on family, heritage, and the ties that bind us.
It is a beautiful read. As an African from Africa, I could relate to some of the experiences you shared in these chapters. At other times, I stepped back to witness the revelations you conveyed about the contrast between what you had been told about Africa and how you experienced it firsthand,
Rachel Décoste is a writer whose work bridges culture, identity, and belonging. Her essays and short nonfiction have appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul: I’m Speaking Now—cited in Book Page’s Best of 2021—and in Canadian Notes & Queries.
Over the past decade, she has published more than 150 opinion pieces for outlets including HuffPost Black Voices in the U.S., Canada, Québec, and France. Her writing brings a global lens to questions of race, heritage, and home.
The Jollof Journey is her debut memoir.
