I write about travel as a catalyst for transformation—how movement across borders, cultures, and histories reshapes our understanding of self, community, and belonging.
In 2010, I quit my job and took a trip around the world—traveling to seventeen countries across five continents in eight months. I volunteered, backpacked, moved through cities and cultures, and crafted Where I’m From poems with new friends along the way.
Immersed in service, storytelling, and risk, the journey carried me into classrooms in Guatemala, India, South Africa and Thailand, leading poetry workshops in Kenya, and paragliding over the Swiss Alps. I called it the Poetic Justice World Tour, but it became far more than an adventure.
At its core, Where I’m From is a travel memoir about how the places I go, the people I meet, and the poetry we create together—prompt a reckoning with my past of growing up in poverty in New York. As I move across landscapes, old memories surface. Family, faith, race, love, belonging—all of it travels with me.
Through beauty and brokenness, laughter and loss, I gather hard-won lessons that reshape how I see myself, my relationships, and the world.
Travel is not just about seeing the world, but about allowing it to change you.
Before writing her memoir, Ebony wrote poetry reflecting on identity,spirituality, and global connection. Poetry was one of her earliest creative languages and continues to shape her storytelling voice.
In addition to long-form memoir and Substack essays, Ebony writes shorter reflections exploring race, place, travel, and transformation. Many of these pieces become seeds for larger creative projects across film, audio, and public conversation.
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