Barry Hoffner is the author of the new memoir Belonging to the World: A Journey from Grief to Connection in Every Country on Earth. It focuses on his experiences after the death of his wife, Jackie, in 2017. Hoffner is the founder and executive director of the educational foundation Caravan to Class. He lives in Sausalito, California.
Q: First of all, I'm so sorry for the loss of your wife... Why did you decide to write Belonging to the World, and how was the book's title chosen?
A: After losing Jackie in a tragic accident in Africa toward the end of 2017, I felt an overwhelming need to step out of my life for a while—to leave behind a home and community saturated with memories. My older son was in his first year at Georgetown University, so I rented a house nearby and he moved in with me.
After about six months of intense grieving, contemplative reading, and deep loneliness, I decided to take a tentative step back into life by traveling.
I chose to run a half marathon in Tajikistan—a place that promised adventure, wandering, and the possibility of real change. One trip followed another, and along the way I realized that travel was no longer an escape; it was becoming a form of healing.
During Covid, with my boys home, I happened to meet a young Spaniard who had traveled to every country in the world. A light bulb went off. That was something I needed to do. I began this period of intentional travel in late 2021 and quickly found that I was truly living again—learning, growing, and, most importantly, connecting with people in a new way.
The places I visited weren’t objectively dangerous—Uganda, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia—but if I was going to travel to every country in the world, I would eventually have to go to places the world warned me against.
Then came the trip that forced me to question whether this journey was really what I wanted: Afghanistan, just one year after the Taliban takeover. I should have felt fear, but I didn’t. Instead, I felt curiosity. It was too compelling, too thought-provoking. I could feel the healing power of travel rewiring my brain.
That was when I knew I needed to write this story. Even in places considered among the most dangerous in the world—Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria—I felt an unexpected sense of belonging and connection with the people I met.
I realized then that I wasn’t searching for countries; I was searching for stories. Belonging to the World is a collection of those stories.
Q: The author Bill Browder called the book “a testament to resilience, empathy, and the belief that through understanding others, we rediscover ourselves.” What do you think of that description?
A: We tend to experience much of the world through headlines—Syria, Somalia, Yemen—and those headlines almost always project danger, disaster, and fear. What they rarely show us are the people: their daily lives, their hopes, their humor, and their dreams.
Traveling to every country in the world rewired the way I see things. It pushed me to actively seek out people’s stories, to listen more deeply, and to understand lives very different from my own. In recognizing their humanity, I found that my own humanity expanded as well. In that sense, Bill’s description feels exactly right.
Q: Of the various countries you visited, are there a couple that especially stand out for you?
A: Syria stands out most powerfully. With my mother having been born in Baghdad, the Middle East has always held a particular pull for me. Still, my impressions of Syria had been shaped almost entirely by images of Assad, bombings, and refugees streaming across Europe.
Seeing Syria and meeting its people up close shattered those assumptions and forced me to question how much I really understood at all.
The people I met were deeply human—warm, curious, engaged, and extraordinarily hospitable. They welcomed me into their homes, shared coffee with me, and opened their lives to me amid partially bombed-out cities.
Encountering Syrians and the tragedies they survived for more than a decade, outside of a political lens, cracked my heart open. It remains one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life and taught me the kind of humanity I now actively seek in my travels.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: Writing the book taught me that we are capable of holding two truths at the same time. Yes, there is real danger in the world. But there is also profound beauty in seeking out people different from ourselves—offering them the dignity and respect every human being deserves, being willing to listen, to understand, and to learn.
When we do that, our own lives become more expansive. The world will change you, if you let it.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m not sure what comes next after this book. What I do know is that I couldn’t move forward with my life until I put this story into writing.
These days I’m traveling a bit less, and I find myself missing those spontaneous, deeply human interactions—especially with people very different from me, even when we didn’t share a common language.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I hope readers will find something meaningful in Belonging to the World—both in the story itself and in what it might offer them about the wider world.
The book is also tied to a cause close to my heart: 100 percent of the proceeds support scholarships for women in West Africa, in my wife’s name, through our Bourse Jackie program.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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