The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2008 edited by Lucy McCauley

Travelers’ Tales, 2008
Review by Suzanne Kamata

The traveler’s tale my husband and I tell most often is about the time an arsonist set fire to our Vancouver hotel and I was rescued by hook and ladder. It was a small fire, no one was injured, and we got a story out of it that we would tell for years to come.

Likewise, many of the selections in The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2008, edited by Lucy McCauley, emerged from well-laid plans gone awry. For instance, in “Ski Patrol,” Anne Lamott learns a life lesson from falling out of the chair lift, whereas Laura Resau bonds with her Mexican date’s mother – after he stands her up – in “My Ex-Novio’s Mother.” Kira Coonley writes about the devastating tsunami that wrecked her vacation and changed her life in December 2004, while Kari Bodnarchuk’s contribution, “On the Dark Side,” tells of a kayaking trip in Patagonia that starts off with an overturned boat, and a friend in the water.

Adventure aside, many of these essays bring small, seemingly inconsequential moments to light. Christine Sarkis’ irresistibly titled selection, “ Dipping Girl, Flying Girl, Heart Attack,” is about a woman needing to empty her bladder while enjoying fondue. How she gets to the bathroom is basically the whole story. C. Lill Aherns (“A Simple System”) writes about stoking the coal stove early in the morning in her Korean apartment building.

These essays take the reader from Italy, to India, to Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, and El Salvador, among other destinations. While some detail interesting vacations, others do not fit the usual conventions of travel writing. Momena Sayed’s contribution, “Paradise – Lost,” for example, is a memoir of her life in her homeland Afghanistan during war-time, written while the author was a student at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. In “A Life Together, Worlds Apart,” Tracy Slater, who is married to a Japanese man, writes of dividing her life between Osaka, where she lives part-time with her husband, and Boston, where she teaches literature and gender studies to the incarcerated through the Boston University Prison Education Program. And Marianne Rogoff’s trip to Portugal (“Alive in Lisbon”) takes her not to a resort, but to a hospital, where she has been invited to read from her book about her deceased infant daughter.

A disproportionate number of these writers have a connection to the Boston area, where editor McCauley lives, which makes me wonder about the selection process. What would have happened if she had cast her net a bit wider? Nevertheless, this is a solid collection featuring a wide range of travel experiences by both established and emerging writers – cheaper than a plane ticket, the next best thing to being there.

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