Black, disabled, nonbinary author, poet, journalist, professor and Third Culture Adult Shayla Lawson, author of “This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope” (Harper Perennial, 2020), released a new must-read text: “How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir” (2024, Tiny Reparations Books). What started as a survival guide-type international travel book for women became a true tale of physical and cultural survival that unfolds for the reader in real-time.
Lawson takes us on a global travel adventure — everywhere from Harare, Zimbabwe, Kyoto, Japan, Hoensbroek, the Netherlands and more. However, the real journey is as inward as outward – told in a technicolor language, with strobe lights of vulnerability and humanity. Lawson’s willingness to intimately share their authentic experiences with self-liberation changes the tone of this travel memoir from confessional to conversational.