The Importance of Travel Writing

By: Slater Rhea

March 31, 2007

As an American, and one who wishes to write about and to comment on the human experience, I desire very deeply to understand the lives of those outside of my immediate culture. Because of want of commonality with others, and a kind of universal citizenship, it is useful, and often undertaken to visit other distinct communities, to observe, and to report one’s observations. “What does it mean to be a member of another society?” and “What does it mean to be American?” are important questions which this “travel writing” attempts to answer; they are questions I seek to answer in my life.

From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Marble Faun and Henry James’ American which deal with American perspectives in Europe to Richard Engel’s War Zone Diary about daily life in modern Iraq, the genre know as “travel writing” has been vital to American and Western thought. Because it is by definition observation made by cultural outsiders it offers a perspective which is freshly observant. Subtle, important differences in societies’ ways of life become apparent, and the knowledge of these can be powerful to both cultures.

To my mind, some of the most deeply affecting and meaningful literature about American life has come from foreigners, or those otherwise alienated from society at large. Alexis de Toqueville, a French citizen wrote eloquently about the early American experiment, Anzia Yezierska wrote about trying to survive in depression era New York as a Russian woman immigrant, and Ralph Ellison, a man alienated by his race brought the absurdity of American racial strife and segregation into grand relief in his Invisible Man. These writings by outside observers have been vital to the discussion of American life, in its distinct beauty as well as in its flaws.

Travel writing is important because it is an examination of one culture through the perspective of another, so that when we write about other cultures, we are necessarily writing about our own. It informs us of what is different, and of what is common. Experience beyond personal frames of reference is informative of benefits within certain societies, and of grievances. It is worthy, and necessary, and to experience and share it is one of my true personal priorities.