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She had a mother who was absolutely driven to get her children the best education possible, to the point of constant relocation. As a result, she has the detachment seen among some military brats and children of frequently relocating corporate warriors, no lasting friendships, even an inability to appreciate the need.

To the positive, she is clearly intelligent and writes quite well, even compellingly. Her mother's efforts were not at all in vain.

To the negative, her rootlessness and detachment has progressed into alienation. She's still looking for love that she herself can't return, though, just pining away in the stunted manner of which she is capable, and has now internalized the antiquated black power radicalism of the college campus. The difficulties posed by an uncritical embrace, of the very same same people who rejected her much more so than any other identifiable racial group in this country, is lost upon her poor rudderless soul yet again.

She has an attachment disorder, a problem of emotion and distancing, an inadvertent lesson she also learned while along for the ride on her mother's Bedouin educational odyssey. There will be no improvement wherever she alights, as the problem exists within herself.

Maybe being “home” ancestrally speaking will help her see this. Home is good and she's never really had one. This psychological homelessness was not imposed upon her by America or Americans, however. She encountered the good, the not so good and the unintentionally ignorant here.

There is not any other, magical geographical location where this won't be encountered. She's verging upon recreating the wandering trek of her childhood in search of the unobtainable.

Sort of sad, really. She's beautiful and bright, but damaged.

She has an attachment disorder, a problem of emotion and distancing, an inadvertent lesson she also learned while along for the ride on her mother's Bedouin educational odyssey...Maybe being “home” ancestrally speaking will help her see this. Home is good and she's never really had one.

This sounds like a reasonable theory. I don't usually try to analyze strangers, but if they write about their feelings and their lives long enough, one can't help but pick up clues. And I was about her age when I went to Ireland thinking I was going to the home of my ancestors... it was eye-opening, and the beginning of my understanding that I was American. Maybe it'll open her eyes too.