My New Book: "Growing up with God and Empire"

I am happy to announce that my new book from Multilingual Matters, "Growing Up with God and Empire: A Postcolonial Analysis of 'Missionary Kid' Memoirs," was published this month. The book provides historical, political, and religious contexts for missionary work, and then analyzes 42 memoirs of now-adult North American missionary kids who lived in various countries over various time periods, mostly mid-20th century. I look at colonial-related themes such as portrayals of the "exotic," language learning, treatment of local people, schooling, race, social class, and gender. Abundant salient/illustrative/revealing excerpts from the memoirs are included. I end with a “Personal Epilogue” describing some of the issues and struggles I had while writing this book, some of which were to do with re-examining my own missionary kid background (many years ago), balancing my academic and personal roles in writing the book, and trying to be fair in portraying missionary work regarding both the good that missionaries and missions did and the sometimes negative colonial aspects of their work. Writing this book involved much (fascinating!) research and hard work, and at the same time was very engaging and meaningful to me, even emotional at times, as it brought together my own missionary kid background, my scholarly interests, and my love of memoir. I am also pleased that I have provided a glimpse into the under-examined lives of missionary kids and their place in the missionary enterprise and the colonial project. I want to express here my profound thanks to my colleagues and friends who were so supportive as I wrote this book, to the terrific editors at Multilingual Matters, and most of all to my missionary parents and missionary kid brothers. I also deeply thank those scholars who wrote the generous reviews/endorsements listed in the Multilingual Matters catalog (see link below). More detailed information is available at http://www.multilingual-matters.com/display.asp?K=9781788922326