A missionary’s wife leaves Regency England to minister to the Khoikhoi in South Africa. Two hundred years later, her great-great granddaughter leaves Africa to immigrate to the United States. Across time and place, two immigrant stories begin to touch and entwine.
Old New Worlds is a work of creative nonfiction that is both timeless and timely. The narrative arc follows the life of Sarah Barker, who left England with her missionary husband in 1815 to minister to the indigenous Khoikhoi in pre-apartheid South Africa. Interwoven with this immigrant story, and looking at it through the lens of hindsight, is that of Sarah Barker’s great-great granddaughter, Judith Krummeck, whose own immigration from South Africa to America almost two hundred years later drew as many parallels as distinctions.
The intimate lives of these two women in their different times and places are thrown into relief against the larger social issues of colonialism and immigration, ethnic prejudice and genealogical roots, which are as urgent and universal today as they have ever been. The book is a combination of rigorous research, based on original diaries, letters, and archives, and of lyrical imaginings, as the author immerses herself in the pioneering life of her great-great grandmother and comes to love her as a soul mate.
Three countries, two immigrants, one woman’s search to find her ancestral soul mate
“In this cross-genre work, Krummeck (Beyond the Baobab, 2014) interweaves a memoir of her immigration to America with a creative imagining of her great-great-grandmother’s journey to South Africa as a missionary’s wife. … Krummeck’s own story is written as a memoir, but Sarah’s reads like a historical novel, with factual material and imagined dialogue side-by-side. These forms elegantly dovetail when the author inserts her first-person perspective into Sarah’s narrative: “Sarah had conceived her fourth child around the time of their third wedding anniversary—I like to think on their wedding anniversary.” Krummeck also evocatively describes the landscape through her ancestor’s eyes: “The clean air was pure and rich, the redolent earth a tawny ochre.” The present and past meld well, creating a sense that the author has a foot in both worlds.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Old New Worlds intertwines the immigrant stories of the author and her great-great grandmother. Sarah Barker and her new husband sail from England in 1815 to minister to the indigenous Khoihoi in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. In the midst of conflict, illness, and natural disasters, Sarah bears sixteen children. Two hundred years later, Judith leaves post-apartheid South Africa…” —The Rumpus
“While meditating on the emotional impact of immigrating, [Judith Krummeck] also makes ties to politics and cultural aspects of both places and time periods, from apartheid and the mistreatment of the Khoikhoi people to the Baltimore Uprising of 2015… Most importantly, Krummeck has written her own story, and that of her family, for many generations to come.” —Baltimore Magazine
“Judith Krummeck’s new book, “Old New Worlds” (Green Writers Press, 360 pp., $24.95), occupies a unique spot on the spectrum of creative non-fiction.” —Marion Winik Q&A with Judith Krummeck for Baltimore Fishbowl
“In Old New Worlds, Judith Krummeck weaves a seamless narrative that crosses generations, crosses oceans, and crosses cultures to arrive on the shore of a collective experience. Krummeck’s work illustrates a struggle shared not only between members of her own family, but common to many of those who decide to leave the familiarity of home, community, language in search of something more — something better.” —CarlaJean Valuzzi for Cobalt Review
