lucyduller 's review for:

Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World by Rita Golden Gelman

3.75

adventurous hopeful reflective slow-paced

---

I listened to this book in audio form as the result of following The StoryGraph’s Genre Reading Challenge 2023. One of the 10 prompts for books was a travel memoir, a type of book I don’t think I’ve ever read before. 

I’ll be completely honest, I went into it feeling a bit uninterested. Hearing about white people going on holiday for years to “see the world” and become their version of “cultured” never really sat right with me. Anthropology has deep roots in colonialism and so it sometimes feels ignorant to engage in this without knowing about that. 

There were parts of this book that did fit this reputation. There were multiple occasions of Rita Golden Gelman using terms that are very dated such as ‘retardation’, ‘deaf and dumb’.  I thought this book would have been published in the 80s or 90s but as it turns out it was originally published in 2001, but the audiobook version I 2014. I think they probably should have re-edited it whilst recording it but who am I to say. 

I was also worried this book would be a bit ‘eat, pray love’-y, and I guess you could say this was Eat, Pray, Love before it’s time (that book came out in 2006). Rita became a nomad after her marriage broke down and her children left home, a time when a lot of women fall into pits of loneliness and despair as their husbands grow distant and they no longer have children to look after. So actually I found this book to be a little dare I say empowering? Although maybe it’s voyeuristic and inappropriate. Still undecided. 

One concept she describes that I liked was the idea of a favour bank; the idea that in the world everyone has a shared ‘bank’ account. When you do someone a favour, you are making a deposit and that person accepting the favour is making a withdrawal. It means that in future, if you need help you should not be afraid to ask for help, because you’re giving someone an opportunity to make a deposit into the favour bank that they can withdraw at a later date. 

I would highly recommend this book if you are afflicted with wanderlust and want to travel in what Gelman calls a ‘genuine’ way, i.e., not visiting touristy spots but living among locals.