ALL MY PARENTS

Henderson-James was born in 1945 and lived a peripatetic life from the ages of 2 to 16. Her parents, Lawrence and Muriel, were Christian missionaries, spending years stationed in Angola. As a result, the author traveled back and forth between Angola and the United States as a youngster, an experience “rich beyond comprehension.” She learned Portuguese, French, and some Umbundu and was introduced to a world of remarkably extended horizons, one largely alien to her American peers, whom she generally found “pallid and provincial.” But Henderson-James’ exciting life was not without its dislocations and challenges. She was often sent away to school—she went to high school in Southern Rhodesia—and those protracted absences took their toll on the family, engendering a diminishment of intimacy. And her father—generally an “ethical, honest, and principled man”—was also a morally hypocritical one. While he took uncompromising stances against drinking and smoking and shunned the author’s sister for her divorce, he was guilty of an “extra-marital liaison.” Henderson-James, no longer in contact with a sister who turned her back on her as well, sees her “father’s moral dilemmas” at the core of these estrangements, a predicament candidly and skillfully discussed. The memoir is as thoughtful as it is lucidly composed, and the author’s life has been a fascinatingly memorable one. In addition, her recollection is a moving homage to her “allo-parents” and “missionary aunts,” all of the adults who took care of her during the prolonged absence of her own family. But her autobiography is unlikely to sustain the attention of those who don’t count themselves as family or friends. She furnishes an account so saturated with granular details, including the history of both sides of her clan and the family of her husband, Doug, that this is a work best appreciated by those who know the principal players of the story.

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