This story is featured in the May/June 2025 issue of ESSENCE.
Thirty-four years ago, Elaine Lee, then a 38-year-old civil rights attorney, visited Paris—and the trajectory of her life changed. It was the last day of Fashion Week. Lee was at a dinner party, surrounded by models, photographers and Black expats. Eventually the diners began teasing a man named Richard, who was sitting next to her.
“How is it that you vacation for two months and then you work two months?” they asked.
Flipping the question on its head, Richard responded, “Vacation? I don’t take vacations. This is my lifestyle. This is how I live.”
Lee walked away from that evening having learned an important lesson. “That just did it for me,” she recalls. “I thought, I have a vacation-free life because I’m a workaholic. He has a vacation-free life because he has a lifestyle. I had a ‘desk style,’ and I needed to change. I knew then: I’m not really living.”
Inspired by the more than 50 stamps in Richard’s passport, Lee flew home and met with a financial planner to see how she could incorporate more travel into her life. Two years later, she took her first trip around the world.
Now 72, Lee has been catching flights ever since—journeying to 70 different countries in the decades since that transformative dinner. In 1997, she celebrated her love of travel with Go Girl! The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure, an anthology featuring 52 travel stories, poems and pieces of advice from other globe-trotting Black women. Contributors just happened to be preeminent Black artists and thinkers like Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde and Alice Walker.
Nearly 30 years later, Lee has released a second, expanded version: Go Girl 2: The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure. This edition features 54 stories, photos and poems, from writers like Lola Akinmade Åkerström, Lebawit Lily Girma, Martinique Lewis, Rue Mapp and Noo Saro-Wiwa. It also includes new travel philosophies, solo-travel inspiration and financial-planning tips.
Creating space for Black women journeyers to share their travels and to inspire others has been a big part of Lee’s work. She has also seen her share of sights and sounds around the world, and she has a few destinations that she recommends Black women add to their adventure bucket list. One is New Zealand, for its natural beauty. “Some parts of New Zealand are like being on another planet,” she says. “It’s just remarkable to see.”
If you’re looking to feed your hedonistic desires, Lee suggests that you consider Thailand. “The people are so friendly, and the food is so good,” she says emphatically. “Massages are $5 an hour. The beaches, the mountains, the beautiful clothes, the jewelry—it’s all just a wonder to behold.”
In Peru, Lee recommends that Black women travelers visit not only the popular tourist site of Machu Picchu but also the lesser-known, predominantly Black city of El Carmen, about a three-hour drive from Lima. For more of Africa and the diaspora, she advises taking an Afrocentric tour of Egypt, hiking through the Amazon in Brazil and lounging on a beach in the Seychelles Islands.
Lee says travel gives Black women, especially those venturing out of America, more than just a chance to explore—it provides the opportunity to lay our burdens down.
“I find traveling internationally is like a weight being lifted off my soul and my shoulder,” she explains. “When I travel out of the United States, I’m afforded first-class treatment without demanding it. And that’s like a balm in Gilead for me. I need a break from paying the Black tax. I didn’t even realize the stress of living with racism until I had the ability to live without it.”
Lee also views travel as a gratitude practice—an offering of thanks for the gift of being alive, and a way to honor those who came before us. “Our ancestors in slavery wanted nothing more than to travel,” she says. “Mostly to get out of bondage and cross the Mason-Dixon line, but also to go back to Africa. With the time and freedom we’ve been afforded, we can do things differently.”
“We’ve been blessed with this body and mind, and this earth,” Lee adds. “Why not get out there and play on the planet?”
Pack a Book
These must-read works by Black authors are perfect literary companions to take with you to trending destinations.
Love in Color,
by Bolu Babalola
Swoon as you sail down the Nile in Egypt with Babalola’s mythical collection of love stories, set across the Mother Continent.
The Deep Blue Between,
by Ayesha Harruna Attah
Explore the inextricable links between West Africa and Brazil with this story of twin sisters, Hassana and Husseina, who struggle to reunite after they are torn from each other and separated by an ocean.
Monster in the Middle,
by Tiphanie Yanique
Bask in the sun and sand of the Virgin Islands while getting lost in this steamy tale of two lovers struggling to make their relationship endure.
Black Girl in Paris,
by Shay Youngblood
Explore the journey of Black artists who, like the heroine in this novel, sought refuge and inspiration in Paris.
The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenth-Century Afro-Peruvian Mystic,
by Ursula de Jesus
While there is little written about Afro-Peruvians, the diary of de Jesus provides unique, first-person knowledge of the life of a formerly enslaved woman and her encounters with supernatural forces.