The Displaced Nation

Before drawing up the charter, as it were, for The Displaced Nation in April, the site’s two Founding Mothers — Kate Allison and myself — and its one Founding Father, Anthony Windram, engaged in some vigorous debate over what the site’s “categories” should be.

We had met through our blogs. What topics did we all have in common?

One of them was easy: cultural discombobulation, to borrow a phrase from Anthony Windram’s blog title. Except we had now come up with a new term: displacement.

Now what do we mean by “displacement” in the context of global travel and residency? My favorite analogy is to an old-fashioned fruit slot machine — but where each fruit is assigned a national identity. I suspect, for instance, that my two colleagues, both of whom are Brits who are living in the U.S., sometimes have days when they spin the reels and get two gooseberries (British fruit) and one cranberry (American fruit) — meaning they’re feeling a lot more British than American. Whereas for me — an American who has lived in both the UK and Japan — I’ll often get one cranberry, one gooseberry and one mikan (Japanese fruit), an outcome that makes my head spin, as I simply don’t know where or who I am. That, btw, is what’s known as hitting the jackpot in our displaced world!

Thus the category What a Displaced World was born, the default category for most of our articles.

Speaking of fruits, food was another obvious category. It was something that had drawn the three of us together in the first place. Indeed, Kate Allison’s blog — Marmite & Fluff — even has food (two of her favorites) in its title.

For this category, we came up with It’s Food! — which, if less than original, we hope does the job thanks to the exclamation mark.

Around the time we spoke about starting this blog, Kate was beginning to serialize a fictional account of a trailing spouse, Libby, on her blog. She proposed moving Libby’s Life to the new site, and we came up with the category It’s Fiction! Libby now shares that real estate with our posts consisting of interviews with novelists who’ve written about the expat life or travel.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and the category Random Nomads sprung out of our decision to have me continue the interviews with expats and repats I’d started on my blog, Seen the Elephant. If “nomad” was obvious, the three of us felt that “random” worked well with it, since we’re constantly bumping into — actually as well as virtually — the kind of people who strike us as being interesting because of their displacement.

As for the Displaced Hall of Fame, this came about because of Anthony Windram’s desire to explore the writings of famous people who’ve been displaced both in centuries past and our own time. While he has a bent for the classics — and has chosen to feature literary giants such as Vladimir Nabokov and James Joyce in his posts — Kate and I have occasionally expanded the category to include celebrity types, ranging from the actress Mia Wasikowska (a Third Culture Kid) to the model India Hicks to the chef Jamie Oliver.

The “monthly theme” idea

But then once the blog got underway, we decided that in addition to these categories, we enjoyed organizing our posts around monthly themes, rather like a magazine (the fashion issue, the cheap eats issue, the summer issue, etc.).

This came about rather by accident as Kate Middleton and Prince William’s nuptials took place around the time we launched, prompting us to do a series of Royal Wedding posts focusing on what a global event this quintessentially British occasion had become.

Other initial themes were:

• Domestic expats — the idea that you didn’t have to go abroad to feel displaced (apt in these economically troubled times), anchored by Kate Allison’s The domestic expat.

• Gothic tales — the sad reality that global travelers and residents aren’t immune to life’s horrors, or above committing evil acts, anchored by my article What did Agatha Christie know? Expats make great criminals.

• Reality bites — the occasions when political realities and natural disasters interrupt the best-laid lives of global residents and travelers, anchored by my article In the jaws of political or natural disaster: When reality bites for expats.

But then something (we’re not quite clear what) happened, and our thinking morphed again. We started exploring themes based on particular characters, historical and literary, that have inspired us, as well as books:

• Alice in Wonderland — June was dedicated to exploring the “curious, unreal” aspects of the displaced life, as represented by Lewis Carroll’s “little heroine.” Kate Allison’s 5 lessons Wonderland taught me about the expat life, by Lewis Carroll’s Alice introduced a series of posts ranging from an expat’s account of her topsy-turvy life in Tokyo to a repat’s comparison of Kate and Will’s whirlwind California visit to a caucus race.

• Pocahontas — In July we examined the Pocahontas legend for what it can still tell us about cross-cultural relations, particularly among people who are linguistically or racially different. My article 5 proverbs on cross-cultural relations, by Pocahontas ushered in a series of posts ranging from an interview series with cross-cultural married couples to a fierce debate on whether the “noble savage” trope still has relevance for expats today.

• The Enchanted August — This month we’ve been concentrating on ways expats can seek summertime enchantment, as inspired by the works of Edwardian novelist Elizabeth von Arnim, author of The Enchanted April. Kate Allison launched the theme with The Enchanted August: Finding vacation enchantment in a displaced world. Highlights thus far have included a post on enchanted cocktails that can “transport” you to far-flung lands and, just yesterday, one by Anthony Windram on his new-found enchantment with lightening bugs.

And September will be — wait for it! — Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance month, a series of posts inspired by Robert M. Pirsig’s 1974 philosophical novel.

Some say they like the way we cover themes, while we suspect others find it rather zany.

How about you, what do you think? And if you’re pro-theme, can you suggest any you might like us to cover?

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post on films and TV series that take vacations to other lands.

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Related posts:

• Is The Displaced Nation for expats, travelers — or both?
• Bye for now, world!