One thing that sticks out in the book is how detached Noo's eye is from China and Chinese people. One sentence you will read about racist incidents she is put through by Chinese who have never seen a black person before and in the next sentence she is surprised Chinese students don't act like the 'automatons' she imagined them to be. In one incident she is angry that her candid photography of Chinese people going about their day is spoiled by the same Chinese photographing her, photographing them. This one encounter illustrates the biggest gap in the book - Noo's failure to understand the Chinese side of things. That said, this would have been no easy task.

I was mobbed by crowds of smiling parents and children requesting a photo op with me. One family thrust their five-year old boy into my arms . . . . Others pointed at my short, Afro hair and gave me the thumbs up, calling me 'Michelle Obama' and insisting on adopting a frozen handshake pose with me as if I were America's First Lady

This cultural detachment also applies to Noo's encounters with the African community themself. Saro-Wiwa is a boarding school educated British-Nigerian, and many of her conversations seem to be constrained by that middle class self consciousness so many people have. Often this comes in the form of pointless insertions of the author's judgements or views on Igbo-Yoruba ethnic tensions, the legitimacy of the Biafran state, and general impressions on Nigerian government. Sometimes these are relevant, often they are not.

Overall, an interesting look into one of the invisible worlds brought on by 21c globalisation, but one that struggles with the author's inability to decide whether they are an investigative reporter, a travel writer, or one of the people who she is writing about.