Sunday Books & Culture - Nonfiction
Ambassador Bridgewater's autobiography tracks her career from Fredericksburg to Cincinnati and across the globe.
Bridging Troubled Waters
BY PAMELA E. BRIDGEWATER
Published by B.K. Royston, 371 pages
Amazon
Reviewed by Martin Davis
Memoirs — even those written by former U.S. presidents — tend to have short lifespans.
But then, there are exceptions to every rule.
Pamela Bridgewater’s memoir, Bridging Troubled Waters, is sure to be one of those exceptions. That’s because the book has value on at least three levels — local, the Foreign Service, and in the current political debate.
For older locals, Bridgewater’s reflections on growing up and attending school in Fredericksburg will conjure recollections of the city’s deeply segregated past, and the strength of the Black community that nurtured Bridgewater (and so many others) during those trying times.
For newer locals and the children who now call our area home, Bridgewater’s story is a shining light about showing us what determination, support, and the care of a strong community can do.
This book will long have a place for those both in and studying the Foreign Service. As a first-hand account of a career that included many notable firsts in the Foreign Service, Bridging Troubled Waters will long be an important source for researchers and future graduate students looking to understand the dramatic changes that occurred in South Africa late in the 20th century.
The significance of Bridgewater’s work there is captured perfectly in the quote used at the beginning of Chapter 8, reproduced below:
Pamela Bridgewater’s role as the first African American woman political officer posted at the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria in 1990 and her role as Consul General in Durban in 1993 were well known. I was extremely proud of the work she was engaged in to help end the Apartheid system and to support President Nelson Mandela.
—Ambassador Makila James
This chapter makes for some of the most compelling reading in the book. It is appropriate, therefore, that it is also the longest chapter.
Bridgewater’s memoir is also sure to stand because of the important lesson it has for all of us today.
Throughout a career that exemplified the importance of “soft power” to drive improvements for people across the globe, Bridgewater is perfectly positioned to remind us of what the current administration is costing us with its shortsighted and poorly thought-out cuts.
She ends with the story of Nehemia Abel, a former refugee resettled to Fredericksburg who Bridgewater mentored. Abel graduated with honors from the University of Mary Washington, then with Bridgewater’s guidance found his way to USAID as a development officer.
Then, as Bridgewater writes, “USAID was abolished by the current administration; Nehemia’s training was ended and his tour of duty as a development officer, cancelled.”
Bridgewater, however, is far from done.
She isn’t about to stand down in the face of an Administration that fundamentally misunderstands the importance of America’s role on the world stage. And under Bridgewater’s guidance, Nehemia won’t stand down either.
We look forward to when Nehemia writes his memoir that reminds us that, as it was with Bridgewater when she was growing up, the ideals that define America are far stronger than the bigotry and ignorance that lives in fear of those ideals.
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