Ilan Stavans and Joshua Ellison's 2012 New York Times opinion piece on traveling garnered attention for its insightful commentary about travel in the modern, globalized world. In Reclaiming Travel, Stavans and Ellison further explore why and how people travel.
They examine the differences between travel and tourism. Travel is a challenge, and one's experiences traveling are not always easy to explain or identify to others. To go on such a journey is to open oneself to risk and misunderstanding. Tourism is fairly effortless, often a passive experience that demands cultures accommodate and insulate visitors. With tourism, locals perform a pantomime of digestible culture that can be captured in photographs and translated into stories for audiences back home.
Stavans and Ellison also note that travel is a privilege largely available to upper- and middle-class people who seek authentic and unusual experiences. But their presence changes the places they go; landscape, culture and activities reshape themselves to accommodate travelers and tourists alike. The demand for exclusive experiences eliminates the "authenticity" sought in the first place, tending to turn travel into mass tourism.
In Reclaiming Travel, rather than draw on personal adventures to share their ideas, Stavans and Ellison offer stories from literature, including Homer's Odyssey and Jamaica Kincaid's Small Island. This helps make their book accessible to any audience because, while it's difficult to experience another person's vacation, these clear, well-written narratives resonate. --Justus Joseph, bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company