AFRICA OPENED MY HEART by Julie Wang (Benin)

a new book—

Africa Opened My Heart
Julia Dreyer Wang (Benin 2012-14)
Native Book Publishing
August 2024
341 pages
$19.99 (paperback), $3o.00 (Hardcover), $4.99 (Kindle)

Julia Wang (Benin 2012-14)

Africa Opened My Heart is a moving testament to having the courage to set out on new adventures later in life.

After her husband died in 2009, Julie Wang, then 62, was encouraged to do so by reading about Jimmy Carter’s mother, Lillian, another older Peace Corps Volunteer.

Julie was assigned to Benin, West Africa, a country she had barely heard of, but where she soon found herself falling in love with the Beninese people, who showed her how to survive and thrive in this sometimes-challenging country.

Guillaume

As someone who had founded two businesses in the U.S., teaching entrepreneurial skills to Beninese young and old proved a pleasure. She thought she was doing well until confronted by a group of seamstresses who could neither read nor write. Still, they had fun and learned new skills in keeping track of earnings, raising visibility for their businesses and developing new skills to earn money.

Harvesting onions

These experiences during her two years in Benin created in her an intense desire to make a permanent difference. So with a Beninese man who became her partner, Guillaume, she bought farm land, and together they set up Bio-Benin, an NGO that provides training for young Beninese to earn a living through organic farming – growing vegetables, raising fish, poultry, guinea fowl and rabbits, and eventually cashew nuts and honey.

Guillaume also runs a restaurant and through his connection to Julie, has learned how to brew craft beer. These two skills are also part of the training offered by Bio-Benin.

Chez Guillaume

 . . . 

This book is also a memoir about Julie’s childhood and upbringing. Early on in the book Julie understands that simply serving in Africa does not inherently mean that she is free of racist attitudes. Indeed, she reflects on many of the phrases and expressions of her childhood that carried racist overtones she had never really understood.

Not until returning to the States in 2014, when the events of Ferguson, Missouri and others around the country took place, did she realized with horror that black men were being killed without provocation. Only then did she truly begin to understand the true meaning of white privilege and how far we all must go in order to create a more equal world.

. . .

It’s a small start, but in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived that is to have succeeded.”  That is the true message of this book and one which the author hopes will linger in the hearts of its readers.