When Feeling American Requires Leaving America
Susan Page found home as a 14-year-old on a high-school orchestra trip to Europe. She wasn’t drawn to one place in particular. Rather, it was the feeling that, whether it be in London, Paris, or Amsterdam, she was meant to be an outsider. She would return overseas for her senior year of college, studying at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, before traveling to Italy during law school, and then on to Nepal for a postgraduate fellowship.
Eventually, she joined the U.S. State Department, representing her country around the world. Still, the feeling that struck her as a teenager on the other side of the Atlantic stayed with her: Only outside the United States did she—a Black woman, a diplomat—feel wholly American.
Page, who served in Kenya, Botswana, and Rwanda and became the U.S. ambassador to South Sudan, had an experience familiar to many of her peers. Over the past year, I have spoken with several dozen female career diplomats while researching a book that will center
