Emily Raboteau & Jessica Moore

As a biracial woman in America, as well as a reggae fan and the daughter of a historian of African American religion, award-winning author Emily Raboteau knew of Zion as a place black people yearned to be. At twenty-three, she visited her childhood best friend in Israel, and was struck by the fact that her friend had found a place to belong, while she herself had not. Her subsequent decision to go in search of such a place led to a ten-year journey around the world which culminated in the writing of Searching for Zion, a blend of memoir and travel literature, both one woman's journey for a place to call "home" and an investigation of a people's search for the Promised Land. Raboteau talks about her book and the metaphor of Zion with Jessica Moore, curatorial fellow at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts and a frequent interviewer at Greenlight.