In Traveling Freely, Roberto Carlos Garcia explores questions of race, identity, and the inherent exploitations of capitalism—all from the author’s specific vantage point as a Black Dominican American man. For Garcia, the whole of life is subject to scrutiny. He interrogates the anti-Black streak in Dominican culture historically, socially, and within his own upbringing. He examines home and the American suburbs, racism in the publishing industry, a complicated love affair with World Cup soccer, and our complicity as Americans in all that ails the United States.

Through interpretations of film, literature, and his own life, Garcia insistently makes the case that to resist intersectional violence against marginalized people, we must understand our shared history of oppression. As he writes in “black/Maybe,” “history starts at home.”