Writing Abroad: A Guide for Travelers

247 Pages·2017·1.08 MB·English

by  Peter Chilson

Telling about Society From Notes to Narrative
Howard S. Becker Kristen Ghodsee
Tricks of the Trade Storycraft
Howard S. Becker Jack Hart
Writing for Social Scientists The Chicago Guide to
Howard S. Becker Collaborative Ethnography
Luke Eric Lassiter
The Craft of Research
Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. How to Write a BA Thesis
Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, Joseph Charles Lipson
Bizup, and William T. FitzGerald
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers,
Immersion Theses, and Dissertations
Ted Conover Kate L. Turabian
Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers
Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, Kate L. Turabian
and Linda L. Shaw
Tales of the Field
The Art of Creative Research John Van Maanen
Philip Gerard
A G u i d e f o r T r A v e l e r s
PeTer Chilson & JoAnne B. MulCAhy
The University of Chicago Press • Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2017 by Peter Chilson and Joanne B. Mulcahy
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief
quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the
University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2017
Printed in the United States of America
26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5
isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 44435- 2 (cloth)
isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 44449- 9 (paper)
isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 44452- 9 (e- book)
doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226444529.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Chilson, Peter, author. | Mulcahy, Joanne B., 1954– author.
Title: Writing abroad : a guide for travelers / Peter Chilson and
Joanne B. Mulcahy.
Other titles: Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2017. |
Series: Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lCCn 2017003729 | isBn 9780226444352 (cloth : alk. paper) | isBn
9780226444499 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isBn 9780226444529 (e- book)
Subjects: lCsh: Travel writing—Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Classification: lCC G151 .C455 2017 | ddC 808.06/691—ddc23 lC record
available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003729
♾ This paper meets the requirements of Ansi/niso Z39.48– 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
C o n T e n T s
Introduction 1
Part 1: Encountering Cultures
1 Getting Ready 13
2 Discovering New Cultures 34
3 Encountering Another Language in Your Own Voice 51
4 Documentary Forms and Methods 70
5 Portraits and Profiles 90
6 Writing about Place 109
7 Religion, Politics, and History 128
8 Travel Writing in the Age of the Internet 148
Part 2: Return and Revision
9 Revising Your Writing and Your Life 171
10 The Varieties of Literary Form 188
Acknowledgments 207 Notes 209
Selected Bibliography 225 Index 229

i n T r o d u C T i o n
From Niger, West Africa, September 1986
In a motor park, a big open space where one can buy passage in a bus or
a car, I was waiting for a minivan to a small village to visit a friend. An
old man among the people waiting with me must have recognized some-
thing in my body language or on my face that betrayed my impatience.
He put his hand on my shoulder and, offering me a toothless smile, said
something in Hausa that I didn’t understand. I smiled and looked at him
quizzically. He was anxious for me to understand and asked a young
man in the group to translate his words into French. “A patient man,”
the old man said, tapping the translator’s shoulder, “can melt a rock.”
I nodded, embarrassed that I was so easy to read but impressed by the
power and truth delivered in a proverb I could visualize. Here was a
metaphor I had never heard and which expressed its meaning more ef-
fectively than simply saying, “Be patient!” The old man seemed to be
asking me to take the time to understand something new.
PeTer Chilson, unpublished notebook
2 inTroduCTion
From Guanajuato, Mexico, January 2007
I was the only gringa on the bus from the city of Guanajuato to the
nearby town of Valle de Santiago, the birthplace of my friend Eva Cas-
tellanoz. When I got off, a man in the station directed to me the local
museum, for where else would a visitor want to go in this agricultural
town? At the entrance, the curator, Marta Ruiz, greeted me. She stood
about five foot two but would have been a few inches shorter with-
out the heels. A broad smile filled her open, generous face. Red hair,
a crimson sweater, and ruby fingernails enhanced her warmth. I asked
Marta about legends Eva had told me that featured a monster inhabiting
La Alberca, a nearby crater lake with mythic significance. Marta nod-
ded. She’d heard stories about such a creature from her abuelita (grand-
mother). She mentioned Loch Ness as a point of reference for me. Where
was he now, the monster? I asked, trying not to appear incredulous. She
winked. “Gone north to Los Estados Unidos, looking for work, just like
everyone else.” We both burst out laughing but I wasn’t sure who was
the brunt of the joke.
JoAnne MulCAhy, unpublished notebook
These scenes recall lessons that we carried well beyond our time liv-
ing in Niger and Mexico—m oments that endured because we wrote
about them. But writing doesn’t just safeguard memories; the pro-
cess can transform experience. All travel has an interior and exterior
dimension. Writer Cynthia Ozick contrasts travel in which a “visitor
passes through a place” with that in which “the place passes through”
the person.1 In writing, we capture both aspects of the journey— the
wonders of places we pass through as well as the alchemy within us.
Daniel Boorstin distinguishes between travel and tourism, a dis-
tinction that’s slippery but intriguing to consider. “There is,” writes
Boorstin, “a wonderful, but neglected, precision in these words.”2
“Travel” stems from “travail,” signaling the hardships of mud- rutted
roads, meager food, sickness at sea, and other painful experiences that
characterized travel until the nineteenth century. Enter the “tour-
ist,” originally a hyphenated word, to characterize those who toured
for pleasure. This shift, of course, also democratized travel. When
inTroduCTion 3
Thomas Cook began his rail excursions through England in the mid-
nineteenth century, six hundred people joined the first group. The
elite English who’d had exclusive access to travel balked at the thought
of such a mob. John Ruskin wrote that being “sent” to a place was
“very little different from becoming a parcel.”3 This tension between
tourism and travel continues. “We are constantly being told,” writes
Peter Whitfield, “that true travel is now dead, killed by the age of mass
tourism; but isn’t this pure elitism?”4 We sometimes struggle with the
travail of travel while yearning for the comforts of tourism. Yet we
keep going, hungry for learning about other people and places.
We intend this book for anyone who hopes to use writing and
research to tell a story. Our goal is twofold: to help travelers deepen
their understanding of another culture and to write about that
new awareness in clear and vivid prose. Few intellectual exercises
sharpen our minds as effectively as shaping thoughts into sentences.
This is why new insights arise as we write. At every point, writing
deepens our exploration of unknown terrain, new cultures and lan-
guages, and connections with people.
We have in mind travelers of all kinds: a student embarking on
overseas study anywhere from Chile to Tajikistan; a retiree real-
izing a dream of seeing China; a software engineer in Russia on
business; a Peace Corps worker in Kenya; a guide leading a trip to
Portugal; a teacher of writing. But this book will also serve those
discovering new regions of their own country. Keeping a journal
would enhance the experience of northerners building houses with
Habitat for Humanity in the rural South. As international educator
Michael Woolf argues, “abroad” is not just a geographical desig-
nation. “Abroad” is a metaphor for what is less known, a journey
across boundaries. These tools are adaptable to the needs of each
person confronting the unfamiliar.
freewriTinG The Journey
This book provides tools for writing at every stage of exploration:
getting ready, being on- site in another culture, and returning to