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How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South Hardcover – September 12, 2023

by Esau McCaulley (Author)

4.8 331 ratings

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From the New York Times contributing opinion writer and award-winning author of Reading While Black, a riveting intergenerational account of his family’s search for home and hope

“A riveting book that invites you into the personal journey of one of the finest writers alive today.”—Beth Moore, New York Times bestselling author of All My Knotted-Up Life

A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

For much of his life, Esau McCaulley was taught to see himself as an exception: someone who, through hard work, faith, and determination, overcame childhood poverty, anti-Black racism, and an absent father to earn a job as a university professor and a life in the middle class.

But that narrative was called into question one night, when McCaulley answered the phone and learned that his father—whose absence defined his upbringing—died in a car crash. McCaulley was being asked to deliver his father’s eulogy, to make sense of his complicated legacy in a country that only accepts Black men on the condition that they are exceptional, hardworking, perfect.

The resulting effort sent McCaulley back through his family history, seeking to understand the community that shaped him. In these pages, we meet his great-grandmother Sophia, a tenant farmer born with the gift of prophecy who scraped together a life in Jim Crow Alabama; his mother, Laurie, who raised four kids alone in an era when single Black mothers were demonized as “welfare queens”; and a cast of family, friends, and neighbors who won small victories in a world built to swallow Black lives. With profound honesty and compassion, he raises questions that implicate us all: What does each person’s struggle to build a life teach us about what we owe each other? About what it means to be human?

How Far to the Promised Land is a thrilling and tender epic about being Black in America. It’s a book that questions our too-simple narratives about poverty and upward mobility; a book in which the people normally written out of the American Dream are given voice.

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Popular Highlights in this book

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Patience with broken people and broken things is a manifestation of trust in God.
Highlighted by 218 Kindle readers
We were fellow prisoners to a toxic definition of manhood, struggling for the remnants of respect left after a society had stripped us of dignity. We should have questioned the system.
Highlighted by 164 Kindle readers
He understood that love sometimes means acknowledging and bearing with the broken parts of people, even to the point of suffering scorn.
Highlighted by 152 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

An emotionally resonate epic about being Black in America.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Powerful . . . McCaulley uses examples of his own family’s stories of survival over time to remind readers that some paths to the promised land have detours along the way.”—The Root, Books by Black Authors We Can’t Wait to Read

“Esau McCaulley’s riveting memoir holds together tensions that many of us pry apart: systemic injustice and personal responsibility, accountability and forgiveness, honesty and sympathy. This book is prophetic without being preachy, and heartwarming without being cloying. . . . A triumph of storytelling.”—Tish Harrison Warren, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary

“In these pages are words that redeem time and refresh the human spirit. . . . The timeliness of McCaulley’s honest, hope-filled story—told with depth, precision, and purpose—feels like a balm for the weary soul.”—Charlie Dates, senior pastor of Salem Baptist and Progressive Baptist

“With uncompromising honesty and deep introspection, McCaulley complicates the narrative of ‘overcoming racism and poverty as a hero.’ . . . Powerful and necessary.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“As soon as I finished, I wanted to reread. McCaulley is already recognized as a great scholar and essayist, but this is his best writing yet. The storytelling here is both poetic and prophetic, free of both superficiality and cynicism. Read this book and the words will linger with you.”—Russell Moore, editor in chief of Christianity Today

“McCaulley gives his readers an offering to peer into the window of his soul and that of his southern Black family. It is a story of the convergence of structural racism and the grace of God, which carries them on as they traverse the rugged terrain of life to the promised land.”—Ekemini Uwan, public theologian and NAACP Image Award–nominated co-author of Truth’s Table

“A thoughtfully written book that offers heartfelt, empathetic lessons without preaching to the choir.”—Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Esau McCaulley is associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and theologian in residence at Progressive Baptist Church, a historically Black congregation in Chicago. He is the author of the award-winning book Reading While Black and the children’s book Josey Johnson’s Hair and the Holy Spirit. He is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. His writings have also appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Christianity Today.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The Making of a Villain

My father and mother met in the winter of 1976. I’ve seen photos, stored in a box in the utility closet next to the washing machine and a mop better suited for spreading water around than clearing grime off floors. In these photos, my parents’ clothes are more a battle for supremacy between pastels than anything resembling coherent outfits. There they are, looking as young and untroubled as any two high school students on a Friday night date. Not yet parents, not weighed down with the responsibility of caring for four children, both are smiling, my father standing behind my mother, who sits on a stool with her head nestled into his chest.

They met not long after the Jim Crow laws were replaced by practices more subtle and harder to combat. Segregation was technically outlawed, but custom divided my mother’s hometown of Huntsville into sections. “Things were pretty separated in Huntsville,” my mom recalls. “I cannot remember one time when we partied together. We had Black house parties and white ones, even among students in integrated schools.”

The Parkway Place mall demarcated the white part of town. Located at the intersection of Drake Avenue and Memorial Parkway, it was close enough to the Black section of Huntsville for my mom to feel comfortable visiting. Another mall, called Heart of Huntsville, located deeper into the white area, seemed off-limits. My mother remembers security following her from the time she walked in until she exited: “One security guard for every Black person they saw.”

My parents were introduced by my father’s cousin Larry, whose easy smile and welcoming personality marked him as a charmer. Larry and my mom attended school at J. O. Johnson High, where he was two years ahead of her. Intrigued by the sly older boy, my mother dated him, but after the second outing, she opted to let him down easy by introducing him to her friend Wanda. Larry, in turn, suggested that my mother meet his cousin Esau, who went to school out in the country, at Gurley High.

On that first date, my mother is instantly drawn to my father’s tenderness. She will come to know him as outgoing and funny, but tonight he acts shy and polite. It’s the 1970s, and, playing to the stereotype of the decade as I imagine it, they spend the evening parked at a drive-in movie. In the front seat, Larry and Wanda are hitting it off. Encouraged by his prospects, Larry turns to Esau and says, “Go ahead, cousin, lean in and give her a kiss.”

My dad will have none of it. “I just met the girl,” he says. “I ain’t kissing nothing.”

After the date, my mom boasts that my dad was “the perfect gentleman.” She does not yet know that his tenderness comes from grief, which lingers at the edge of his attempts at humor and charm. After a few dates, in a real show of vulnerability, he tells her, “My father died a few months back. Right before he died, he told my mother that my brother Barney and I weren’t no good. I just thought that I would give you fair warning.”

Believing she can fix what is broken, my mother is hooked. When I prodded her for information years later, she told me, “I think that his whole life he was trying to prove a dead man wrong.”

My dad was six feet tall, with an athletic build from his time as a basketball player, his brown skin a shade lighter than the ebony complexion I inherited from farther up the family tree. His Afro was medium-sized and tasteful, such that it both fit with the natural style of the time and could be maintained at the same length without drawing much attention in the 1980s and 1990s. He didn’t have the most expensive clothes, but they were always clean and well ironed. That tendency for cleanliness would remain his whole life. According to my mom, he was “fine as the day is long, and all the girls wanted him.”

After they had dated for a short time, my father, Esau Sr., brought his new girl home to meet his mother, Wavon, and his grandmother Sophia. According to my mother, Sophia took one look at her and opined, “That is a very good woman right there. You don’t deserve her, Esau.” Turning to my mother, she said, “Laurie Ann, you seem like a nice girl. I would run. This boy will be the source of unending trials for you.” Used to barbs like this, my father didn’t defend himself. His normally wide smile tightened, and he lowered his gaze.

My mother did not know how to process Sophia’s warning. Even now, she is not clear on whether she should have heeded it. When pressed, she returns to the fact that the relationship that gave her so much pain also produced four cherished children.

She made her decision about the man who would shape the rest of her life at Johnson High School, between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. They were just kids, and their courtship was brief. By the spring of 1977, my mother’s junior year, she was pregnant with my sister Latasha. They married in the summer of 1979, six months before my birth. My mother is not yet showing in the wedding pictures, but I am there, forming in her belly, when they exchange their vows and first kiss as a married couple.

Once they married, my parents moved into a trailer on the land where my father grew up. My great-grandmother Sophia and grandmother Wavon still lived together in the larger house to the right of the gravel road that divided the plot in two. After a few years, when my folks had saved enough money to afford a place of their own, they rented a tiny three-bedroom house in a lower-class neighborhood near Alabama A&M University, the historically Black college in our city, a neighborhood for people who were broke but not yet on government assistance.

I was excited to get out of the trailer and move into the city. The well water on Grandma’s property always tasted funny. With few kids my age to play with, I spent much of my time watching TV, learning about what happens to people who live in a single-wide from news reports about trailers being swept up by tornadoes every spring. Our new home would be built into the ground, not balanced uneasily on top of cinder blocks.

The new house doesn’t have much furniture when we move in. That first night, my father brings home McDonald’s, which we eat sitting on the kitchen floor under light cast from our only lampstand. Brandon, my little brother, still a toddler, contents himself with Gerber, a family staple. The light is dingy, but we sit together smiling and talking.

That night, I have not experienced enough of life to realize that happiness will not continue indefinitely. Instead, I figure we will gather regularly for family meals. We will become the Huxtables from The Cosby Show or the Seavers from Growing Pains. We might not have a deluxe apartment in the sky like the Jeffersons, but we no longer live in a home that has wheels. My fond memory of that night may explain why, whenever I’m restless, stressed, or sad, I like to scroll through listings on real estate websites. Houses offer a chance to dream about the lives we might live inside them and the people we might become.

A little while after we move in, I begin to play sports. I am five when my father signs me up to become a member of the Lakewood Rams. Our gold jerseys match the color of the NFL franchise, but the material feels like plastic and scratches like wool. The numbers on the uniforms look like they were cut from black electrical tape. After a few washes, some jerseys are missing portions of their numbers, so that 88 begins to look more like 44.

We are, all of us, Black boys, ranging in color from high yellow to deep chocolate, and from short and chubby to tall and slender. The coaches are a hodgepodge of former athletes, none of whom made it all the way to the future in the pros that we long to see. But it doesn’t matter to us. We follow their every instruction like the words that God gave Moses on Mount Sinai.

At our first practice, I learn how to get into a three-point stance. The coach blows his whistle and shouts, “Spread your legs shoulder width apart. Bend your knees. Get on the balls of your feet. Now lean forward and put one hand on the ground.” Half the kids fall over.

“All right, McCaulley, you seem to be able to get into a stance. I want you to try to get past Jackson over there. He is going to try and block you. Run him over and get to the quarterback.”

That being the sum total of the instruction I will receive, I look up, unsteady in my newly acquired stance, and wait for the whistle. Then I charge. I quickly learn that the coaches’ goal is to figure out which of us has the stomach for the violence necessary to play a sport built on collisions. It turns out that I love the contact and embrace it from the start.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Convergent Books (September 12, 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593241088
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593241080
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.81 x 0.84 x 8.56 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #57,083 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #244 in Black & African American Biographies
- #445 in U.S. State & Local History
- #2,069 in Memoirs (Books)

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4.8 331 ratings

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Esau McCaulley

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Esau McCaulley, PhD is an author and the Jonathan Blanchard associate professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College. His writing and speaking focus on New Testament theology, African American Biblical interpretation, and Christian public theology. His memoir How far to the Promised Land, questions the narrative of exceptionalism that he, and other Black survivors, are conditioned to give when they “make it” in America. His book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope won numerous awards, including Christianity Today’s book of the year. Esau is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. His writings have also appeared in places such as The Atlantic, Washington Post, and Christianity Today.

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J

This work is a treasure and gift both to the Church and those seeking out the love of Jesus

Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2024

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Esau has gifted us the treasure of this work.

"How Far to the Promised Land " is part personal and family memoir, part commentary on the Black experience in the American South, part theological contemplation on the experience of seeking an invisible God in a viscerally fragmented world and finding Him in the most unlikely of places.

But the work itself is so vastly more than the sum of its parts.

Esau's conviction, insight and compassion that just drips off of every page was hard won and forged in the raging fires of suffering. His voice carries with the conviction of a prophet, the compassion of a pastor, the integrity of a scholar, the wisdom of a monk and the kind familiarity of a friend, brother and son.

He has a brilliant gift for narrative storytelling and I found it so easy to let my imagination fall into the shoes of each character in the mosaic of his family that he carefully crafts as the book progresses.

I am so deeply grateful that he has shared this work with the world and I have learned so much from having this opportunity to see the world through his eyes in the brief moments reading this book. In many ways it has helped me as I process aspects of my own life and relationship with my family.

If it was not clear already, I cannot more highly recommend this book to anyone regardless of your disposition towards Jesus or His Church.

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2024

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easau made me cry a couple of times. I'm thankful for his deep reflection over his upbringing, the black commjnjty, grace of God that is able to redeem and transform, and for sharing it with us. thanks for the book!

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Kyle Meador

Great read with so much depth and insight

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2024

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Such a great work - the first chapter alone should be required reading for first year seminary students. This would also make a great reading club book for church folk.

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Kay

Get a new lens to see the people around you

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2024

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In the hero’s journey story that we’re used to, the hero emerges victorious having clearly vanquished his foe. But most true stories don’t end with such a clear "win". Esau McCaulley’s How Far to the Promised Land shines in its celebration of the heroes who build a foundation so others can emerge victorious. The grandparents and parents and siblings and friends who make decisions based on their current circumstance and on what they know. It's not a matter of whether one person can get ahead, it’s about the hard work of helping each other, human as we are, and each one doing the best they can with what they’ve got. The despair of being in a broken and racist system comes through, but not without hope. It’s a moving story of everyday people living life, those words of encouragement, the seemingly small decisions that shape our lives, of complex human emotions, and trying to do what’s right. This book made me think an a new way about some relationships in my own life. An excellent and worthwhile read!

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Samuel Hagos

Beautiful, Well-Written, Hopeful, Redemptive and Invited Reflection

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2023

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Memoir is my favorite genre to read. The challenge in the genre, however, is that the subject can—at times—stand in the way of the story. In "How Far to the Promised Land" Dr. Esau McCaulley invites readers into the story of his (and his family's) life. Instead of standing in the safety of self-protection, McCaulley exudes deep, matured, processed self-awareness. Instead of being superficial and keeping the reader at arm’s length, McCaulley’s vulnerability invites readers to have a front-row seat in every chapter of his life.

In his memoir, McCaulley highlights for us that life is more messy and complex than we give it credit for. The people who have harmed us most have been harmed, too. It is only through honestly facing our own hurts, disappointments and grief that we are given the freedom and grace to see the humanity in those we love and who have hurt us. Thus, allows us to better understand our stories and those who have impacted us most.

McCaulley seamlessly moves from the engaging narrative of his life to assessing the meaning beneath the experience itself to offering a sort of timeless pastoral reflection on the situation which admonishes the reader wherever they find themselves.

McCaulley’s work is not merely an invitation to peer through a window into his life. But, he lifts a mirror and invites readers into a life of self-reflection, compassion, forgiveness and freedom. He issues to readers all hope is not lost, and that God has the power to redeem to us more than sin and Satan can steal from us.

It was a very engaging and meaningful reading experience. It prompted much self-reflection. I have much to reflect on. Thank you, Dr. McCaulley, for entrusting your life and family’s story to us.

3 people found this helpful

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Pamela D. Jenkins

First Person Account

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2024

In case you didn't already believe that African Americans have been and are oppressed in this country through cultural and more direct means, you could read this book to think through these issues more thoroughly and with a bit of empathy and compassion.

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Jen

Making sense of complex family history

Reviewed in Canada on September 19, 2023

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It's so easy for us to categorize people as all good or all bad. In Dr. McCaulley's search to make sense of his family members who seemed to be bad characters, he ends up discovering the stories of his family. His book shares with us his lament, his hope, and where he saw the presence of God.

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