Migration, belonging at heart of memoir

There’s a risk of historical slog with memoirs involving migration and movement, tasked as they are with ferrying entire countries through the narrative like overstuffed luggage. It’s a rare work that manages to not lose its readers in a trek through myth and superstition, politics and prejudice.

“A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing,” by the self-styled American African poet MaryAlice Daniel, is one such gem. In charting her family’s “restlessness, rootlessness” after leaving northern Nigeria in search of safety, security and opportunity, first in England, then in various towns in America, Daniel sets about untangling her own ancestry, dissecting countries with a precision that proves both merciless and benevolent, to understand where she fits. Or rather, to understand what it even means