In Chapter 1, Brown shares anecdotes from her own life to situate her research outside the confines of academia’s abstraction and formality. Brown believes that people are interested in facts, particularly when they support “a preexisting way of seeing the world” (4). However, as she imagines J. K. Rowling telling her, it is the “stories that make up that universe” that give people the ability to imagine themselves in this new world (4). Thus, personal stories are the vessels Brown uses to transmit her research questions: What does it mean to possess some quality of belonging (the right name, race, religion, or some other nebulous characteristic)? What happens when we experience separation? What does it mean to truly belong to oneself?

As a consequence of her early experiences of not belonging, Brown admits that she “learned how to say the right thing or show up in the right way” and became “an expert fitter-in, a chameleon” (16). Later, once she began publishing findings from her work, she realized that the desires behind “fitting in” and “being different, defiant, or contrarian” are effectively the same because she was still “craving belonging” (19). Because of Brown’s early experiences as an outlier, including, at one point, being an outlier within her own family, she equates not belonging with the pain of judgment, loneliness, and separation. Brown was eventually able to successfully address the pain of separation with her family and find a sense of kinship with her husband (14, 17). However, for Brown, up to this point in time, healing and belonging remained a relational activity where healing (with others) signals belonging (with others), and vice versa.

Angelou’s quote on belonging presented a conundrum to Brown because her life experiences spoke to the contrary: “What kind of world would it be if we belonged nowhere? Just a bunch of lonely people coexisting” (6). From this perspective, to belong “no place” is to be without a people, community, or tribe. However, Angelou’s quote speaks to a wider understanding of belonging, one that shifts belonging from a relationship one has with others to a relationship one has with oneself, of always belonging “anywhere you show up as yourself […] in a real way” (26).

In an interview with Bill Moyers, Angelou is asked about the price she paid for freedom. Angelou sidesteps the question and states, “you are only free when you realize you belong no place—you belong every place—no place at all” (5). In belonging to no single place, paradoxically, one is freed from the expectation of fitting into any single place. Moreover, when one is excluded from belonging, when one is told one belongs “no place,” one can arrive at a liberating realization: Nobody actually holds the power to dictate or define who does (or does not) belong. If nobody has that power, then nobody can be excluded. Everybody, in fact, does belong—to every place.