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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
Living with Strangers a memoir by author Robin Rosenbluth, describing moves between the life that formed her in New York and the year that tests her in Songa, a remote Kenyan settlement where Friends World College places her as an unpaid teacher. After her mother dies, Robin is left with adults who fail to keep her safe; then she enters foster care with her younger sister Penny. That history shapes the way she arrives in Kenya at nineteen, alert to rejection, but determined to be useful. In Songa, teaching becomes her way into a community that first sees her as an outsider. As Robin works with children and adult students, the memoir shows how a person who has been passed between homes begins to understand what it means to be claimed.
Living with Strangers by Robin Rosenbluth is a thoughtful memoir about chosen belonging formed through village work in Africa after a childhood of uncertain homes in America. I admired Robin's ability to turn to a life of service after everything she's been through, and there is no question that her outreach to others is exactly the type of care that would have changed her own childhood, had it been routinely offered to her and her sister. Rosenbluth teaching someone to read by candlelight shows tenderness, while her direct talk with the local teacher after village gossip shows genuine honesty. The prose is accessible, and because the writing style feels similar to fiction, it is just so easy to read. Adult memoir readers who are interested in books about cross-cultural education, told through a woman whose foster care past shapes her understanding of community development, will love this. Recommended.
