Aminatta Forna is one of those writers who I wish was more well known in the United States. She is the author of numerous well-regarded and award-winning memoirs and novels, but she’s far from a household name. I’m not sure a collection of her essays will be the thing that rockets her onto the bestseller list, but one can hope that readers will come away from these rich and rewarding pieces with a new understanding of an important literary voice --- and a greater appreciation of the complexities of the world in which we live.

"[O]ne can hope that readers will come away from these rich and rewarding pieces with a new understanding of an important literary voice --- and a greater appreciation of the complexities of the world in which we live."

Many of the essays collected here have been previously published in the journals Granta and Freeman’s. As befitting the international focus of those publications --- not to mention the title of the collection --- many of the essays center on Forna’s experiences visiting or living in countries around the world, from her native Sierra Leone to her adopted homeland of London to her temporary homes in Arlington, Virginia, and Williamstown, Massachusetts, for visiting teaching positions. Forna opens her collection with the title essay, “The Window Seat,” in which she praises the pleasures of air travel (which many of her readers may barely remember): “I love the drama of the take off. The improbability of the whole endeavour.”

This joy in motion, in discovering new places, suffuses much of Forna’s writing here, such as in “Hame,” in which she and her brother accompany their mother to the Shetland Islands, where her family came from. Sometimes that sense of discovery is tinged with sadness; this is especially true in essays like “Santigi,” “The Last Vet” and “Bruno,” all of which touch on the changes she sees in Sierra Leone and its people since the devastating civil war there in the 1990s.

Race and identity are also common themes that tie these essays together --- not only Forna’s multiracial, multinational identity but also those of people like Barack Obama, whose origins she traces to a larger pattern of migration by young Africans (like Obama’s father) in search of an education in the US and the UK, known as the “Renaissance Generation.” Forna remarks on the differences in racial attitudes between the US and the UK. In a particularly resonant essay called “Power Walking,” she touches on the ways in which she, as a Black woman, navigates the sidewalks and their accompanying (white, male) gaze she encounters there.

Perhaps those who already are familiar with Forna's longer work will enjoy this book most and will see in it evidence of research and family history that underpin her memoir and fiction efforts. But for many other readers, THE WINDOW SEAT, with its promise of a glimpse into many different places and ways of life, will give them their first taste of this thoughtful, insightful author and will want to seek out more of her work.