My experimental memoir is titled HOME BOUND: An Uprooted Daughter’s Reflections on Belonging was published via Astra House on October 11, 2022.
While reflecting on a childhood spanning across three continents, between social housing and public boarding school and nicer homes, from the secular to the evangelical and back, from small public schools to Harvard Law School, this book will offer a meditation on the concept of home and the factors that can complicate it. Adapted excerpts have appeared in The Cut, n+1, Guernica, and Current Affairs.
Praise
“This moving book is both an act of defiance — a way to construct a home outside of borders — and a timely manifesto on the need for more equitable housing policy in America, weaving her scholarship in economic justice together with her firsthand experience of the many places she’s lived. “Home Bound” is not just a resonant personal history, but also a thoroughly researched investigation of home.”
— Rajpreet Heir, The New York Times Book Review
“Home Bound is a mesmerizing, globe-spanning story of forgiveness, resilience, and love. Vanessa A. Bee writes with vulnerability, honesty, and fierce intelligence about the intricacies of home, identity, and belonging. A wise and gripping debut.”
— Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin
“A remarkable portrayal of daughterhood, Home Bound will reshape and expand your definition of belonging. In exquisite, captivating prose, Vanessa A. Bee charts her journey within a sprawling yet tight-knit family across three continents. She is a deeply empathetic writer who weaves intimate details alongside profound insights, and often moved me to tears. Moments after turning the last page, I started reading all over again—a rare impulse reserved only for my favorite books.”
— Sanaë Lemoine, author of The Margot Affair
“A hopeful, complicated, political, and, at times, devastating book. Vanessa resurrects stories from the deep crevices of her memory with ease, honesty, and a boundless capacity for empathy. Her preternatural talent for storytelling and her astute analysis have produced a book that manages to exceed the constraints of the memoir genre. I raced through the story, blown away by the depths of Vanessa’s experience and her adeptness in recounting it. You have never read anything quite like Home Bound — a remarkable, captivating story that I’ve already begun recommending to everyone.”
— Josie Duffy Rice, journalist, writer, and co-host of What A Day
“By turns deft, sensitive, witty, defiant, and always intellectually rigorous. Bee’s incisive explorations and bold declarations of who she is (and who she thinks she is), invites us to embrace and wrestle with the multitudes that we all contain.”
— Phuc Tran, author of Sigh, Gone
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