Travel Writer’s Burden

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In a thoughtful essay for Boston Review, Jessa Crispin reflects on the gender dynamics of travel writing, and the genre’s penchant for a colonial mentality that persists in today’s narratives:

Any travel writer who deviates from gender-defined roles risks being overlooked. And that is a shame because we do not need men to explain the world’s far-off reaches to us anymore. It turns out the inhabitants of the far-off reaches have voices of their own. Nor do we still need women to tell us it is fine to set up a life outside of marriage and family. What we do need are more writers willing to break free of travel writing’s colonial tendencies


Katie O'Brien is an English major at Cornell University, where she writes for kitsch magazine, DJs for a rock station, and complains about the cold. Find her on Twitter @abluekite. More from this author →