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CLASSIC DISPLACED WRITING: Proust — The Way by Swann’s

2 Comments Posted by on October 18, 2011

There is a  discernible whiff of Frenchiness to the blog this month. Doubtless you can smell it too, it’s that heady scent of garlic, Gauloises and ennui. Like any true-blooded Englishman it has certainly got my nostrils flaring and my back up too, but don’t worry, I’ll contest it as best I can with pig-headed jingoism and outrageous displays of xenophobia.

However, we did have a specific request to bring back this rather irregular series on Classic Displaced Writing with a post on Proust, and specifically (as French food is a topic this month) one featuring “the incident with the madeleine.”

Some of you may, however, may recall that this series has touched upon France, or more specifically Paris, previously. We looked at an esssay by Saul Bellow and a New York Times article on James Joyce’s Paris.  Now there’s no prizes for noticing that both of those posts are concerned with France as seen and lived by a foreigner. Indeed, considering the nature of this series of Classic Displaced Writing and its semi-regular appearance on an expat-centric blog this is pretty much what you would expect.

The question is, is Proust displaced enough to merit an appearance? While not displaced by geography, as most of our featured writers have been, Proust is displaced by time, by the present. A sickly child who grew into a man who always suffered with his health (the last years of his life were spent mostly confined to cork-lined bedroom), a closeted homosexual, at heart a nineteenth century aristocrat struggling with the France of the twentieth century, there’s plenty to Proust’s life that sets him at odds with his present time and announces him as a stranger to his homeland, and so it isn’t surprising that he retreats into the past.

The famous “incident with the madeleine” is one of many moments In Search of Lost Time where the Narrator of the novel has an incident of “involuntary memory.” It is based on an experience Proust had in his own life, though more prosacially it involved the dipping of a piece of dry toast rather than a madeleine. Up until the dipping of  the cake into his tea, the only memory that the Narrator has of his family’s country home in Combray is of his parent’s friend, Charles Swann, visiting. Due to the visit of Charles, the Narrator is denied of his usual goodnight kiss from his mother. It is only years later when he dips his madeleine cake into his tea that he remembers doing the same as a child at Combray with his Aunt Leonie — and from this, other memories return:

… It is the same with our past. It is a waste of effort for us to try to summon it, all the exertions of our intelligence are useless. The past is hidden outside the realm of our intelligence and beyond its reach, in some material object (in the sensation that this material object would give us) which we do not suspect. It depends on chance whether we encounter this object before we die, or do not encounter it.

For many years already, everything about Combray that was not the theatre and drama of my bedtime had ceased to exist for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, suggested that, contrary to my habit, I have a little tea. I refused at first and then I do not know why, changed my mind. She sent for one of those squat, plump cakes called petites madeleines that look as though they have been moulded in the grooved valve of a scallop-shell. And soon, mechanically, oppressed by the gloomy day and the prospect of a sad future, I carried to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had let soften a piece of madeleine. But at that very instant when the mouthful of tea mixed with cake-crumbs touched my palate, I quivered, attentive to the extraordinary thing that was happening in me. A delicious pleasure had invaded me, isolated me, without my having any notion to its cause. It had immediately made the vicissitudes of life unimportant to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory, acting in the same way that love acts, by filling me with a precious essence: or rather this essence was not in me, it was me. I had ceased to feel I was mediocre, contingent, mortal. Where could it have come to me from — this powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected to the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it went infinitely far beyond it, could not be of the same nature. Where did it come from? What did it mean? How could I grasp it? I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, a third that gives me a little less than the second. It is time for me to stop, the virtue of the drink seems to be diminishing. It is clear that the truth I am seeking is not in the drink, but in me. The drink has awoken in me, but it does not know that truth, and cannot do more than repeat indefinitely, with less and less force, this same testimony which I do not know how to interpret and which I want at least to be able to ask of it again and find intact, available to me, soon, for a decisive clarification. I put down the cup and turn to my mind. It is up to my mind to find the truth…

And suddenly the memory appeared. The taste was the taste of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because that day I did not go out before it was time for Mass), when I went to say good morning to her in the bathroom, my Aunt Leonie would give me after dipping it in her infusion of tea or lime-blossom. The sight of the little madeleine had not recalled anything to me before I tasted it; perhaps because I had often seen them since, without eating them, on the pastry-cooks’ shelves, and their image had therefore left those days of Combray and attached itself to others more recent; perhaps because of these recollections abandoned so long outside my memory, nothing survived, everything had come apart; the forms — and the form, too, of the little shell made of cake, so fatly sensual within its severe and pious pleating — had been destroyed, or, still half asleep, had lost the force of expansion that would have allowed them to rejoin my consciousness. But when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more endearing, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls remembering, waiting, hoping, on the ruin of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.

And as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea that my aunt used to give me … the good people of the village and their little dwellings and the church and all of Combray and its surroundings, all of this which is assuming form and substance, emerged, towns and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.

Extract from Lydia Davis’ translation of The Way By Swann’s from Penguin’s In Search of Lost Time, edited by Christopher Prendergast. This is a fairly new translation of A la recherche du temps  perdu, and it’s one I’ve had more success with than Scott Moncrieff’s more famous translation. You can buy it here. And you should, you know.

STAY TUNED for Wednesday’s RANDOM NOMAD interview with an expat in France.

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The John Steinbeck Encyclopedia of Road Trips

5 Comments Posted by on September 12, 2011

When we announced this month’s theme — road trips — some of you may have wondered if we’d gone around the bend. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — really? That’s a book for roadgeeks or — if you get into its philosophical meanderings — Roads Scholars, not for Displaced Nation types, most of whom equate travel with boarding an international flight.

Besides, road trips are for the young and restless — something you do when you’ve just graduated college.

But before you put the brakes on the road-trip idea again, let me convince you to take one more test drive. Only this time, instead of riding pillion on Robert Persig’s motorcycle, you’ll be seated in John Steinbeck’s camper station wagon next to his pet dog, Charley, on a 10,000-mile journey across America — from Long Island to Maine to Chicago to Seattle to California to Texas to New Orleans and back to New York City.

As the Nobel prize-winning writer puts his engine in gear, may I invite you to peruse our specially compiled John Steinbeck Encyclopedia of Road Trips.

A is for Autumn

John Steinbeck made a road trip across America in the autumn season and in the autumn of his life. He set out from his home in Sag Harbor, Long Island, shortly after Labor Day in 1960. He was 58 years old and not in the best of health. As Edward Weeks wrote of Steinbeck’s expedition in The Atlantic:

He set out with some misgiving, not sure his health would stand up to the 10,000-mile journey he envisioned; as he traveled, the years sloughed off him…

B is for Bestseller

Steinbeck wrote a book about his journey, Travels with Charley. It reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction on October 21, 1962. To this day, the book retains a special place in the American imagination, despite attempts to challenge its categorization as “non-fiction” (see F).

C is for Charley

Meet Charley, Steinbeck’s middle-aged French poodle, one of the most civilized and attractive dogs in literature. He’s the genuine article, a real French poodle, having been born on the outskirts of Paris, where he also received his training. As his proud owner once said:

…while he knows a little Poodle-English, he responds quickly only to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate, and that slows him down.

D is for Dog

For Steinbeck, a dog is an ideal companion on the open road as well as being an effective ice breaker:

A dog is a bond between strangers. Many conversations en route began with “What degree of dog is that?”

E is for Environment

Steinbeck was extremely attuned to the intimate connection between people’s lives and the rhythms of nature — weather, geography, the cycles of the seasons. But while nature animates his picaresque tale of his travels with his dog, one of his key observations was the the high price Americans would eventually pay for lives filled with ease and convenience. He felt they were trashing their environment for the sake of material prosperity. (A tad prescient, might we say?)

F is for Fictions

Journalist Bill Steigerwald set out to retrace Steinbeck’s steps on the 50th anniversary of his road trip. He concluded that not only had the Nobel laureate invented characters, he’d also embellished the hardships of his cross-country journey with Charley. In other words, this brilliant author’s much-loved book is loaded with creative fictions. (Wait, I thought all travel writers used some creative license — is there anything wrong with a novelist-turned-travel-writer using some?)

G is for Giant Redwoods

After sorting out his flat tire in Oregon (see O), Steinbeck visited the giant redwoods and ancient Sequoias and found them as awe inspiring as ever:

The vainest, most slap-happy and irreverent of men, in the presence of redwoods, goes under a spell of wonder and respect.

Steinbeck was further impressed when his dog, Charley, refused to urinate on the trees…

H is for Hurricane

The best-laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry, and Steinbeck had to delay the start of his trip slightly due to Hurricane Donna, which made a direct hit on Long Island. (Still, it could have been worse. It could have been Hurricane Irene!)

I is for International

While he never became an expat, Steinbeck moved to New York City and took quite a few international trips, mostly to Europe. He hoped that his road trip would enable him to reconnect with both the people and the landscape of his native land. He also wanted to see his birthplace — Salinas, California — one last time.

J is for Jamming

Steinbeck’s journey concluded with jamming Rocinante (see R) across a busy New York City street, during a failed attempt at making a U-turn. He reports having said to the traffic policeman:

Officer, I’ve driven this thing all over the country — mountains, plains, deserts. And now I’m back in my own town, where I live — and I’m lost.

K is for Knight-errant

A mainstay of medieval romance literature, the knight-errant wanders the land in search of adventures to prove himself a worthy warrior. Don Quixote is a famous example (see Q). Likewise, Steinbeck hoped to recapture his youth, the spirit of a knight-errant, through his travels. (Makes sense if you’re middle aged and your health is rapidly deteriorating — see P.)

L is for Language (of Road Signs)

Steinbeck closely observes the language of road signs during his trip across country. In New York State, he notes that the road signs are commands: “Stop! No turning!” But in Ohio, the language is gentler, with friendly advice rather than curt demands.

M is for Maine

Steinbeck reports that he learned not to ask for directions in Maine because locals don’t like tourists and tend to give them the wrong directions — another example of regional differences (see L).

N is for North Dakota

Upon arriving at Fargo, North Dakota, Steinbeck declares that the mentality of the American nation has grown “bland.” He fell head over heels in love with Montana, however. NOTE: Steinbeck’s account of meeting an itinerant Shakespearean actor outside the town of Alice, North Dakota, is disputed by the journalist Bill Steigerwald (see F).

O is for Oregon

Having his first flat tire on a remote back road in Oregon inspired Steinbeck to write a send-up of similarly desperate scenes in his most famous novel, The Grapes of Wrath:

It was obvious that the other tire might go at any minute, and it was Sunday and it was raining and it was Oregon.

P is for Poignancy

When Steinbeck set out on his road trip, he knew he could have died at any point along the way because of his heart condition. This knowledge suffuses Travels with Charley with a certain poignancy, and perhaps explains why it’s such a beloved book.

Q is for Quixote

As one might expect of a man who won a Nobel Prize in Literature, Steinbeck had a literary hero in mind when he set out on his road trip: Don Quixote. Like the ingenious gentleman of La Mancha, it seems that Steinbeck fancied himself a knight-errant in search of adventure (see K). He even named his camper truck for Quixote‘s steed (see R).

R is for Rocinante

As the narrator of Don Quixote explains, its hero feels obliged to find the right name for his horse:

Four days were spent in thinking what name to give it, because (as he said to himself) it was not right that a horse belonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of his own, should be without some distinctive name…

At last, Don Quixote calls the skinny steed Rocinante. In a nod to this fictional knight-errant (see K), Steinbeck christened the vehicle for his journey — a green GMC truck, which he’d had custom-fitted with a camper — Rocinante. He even painted the name across the side of the truck in 16th-century Spanish script.

S is for Salinas

Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California. He wrote his first stories about the Salinas Valley and was determined to see his hometown one last time before he died. Visiting a bar from his youth, he lamented the loss of several regulars as well as quite a few of his childhood chums, wondering if perhaps Thomas Wolfe was right (see Y).

T is for Texas

Steinbeck remarked of Texas that it was the kind of state that “people either passionately love or passionately hate.” He went on:

Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word. … A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.

Texas was also where Charley (see C) became ill for a few days and stayed in a veterinary hospital. NOTE: From Texas onwards, Steinbeck’s travel writing gives way to social commentary, culminating in the account of a school integration crisis he witnesses firsthand in New Orleans.

U is for U.S. Route 66

In mid-November of 1960, Steinbeck crossed the Mojave Desert and picked up the historical U.S. Route 66 at Barstow, California. He and Charley then drove 1,300 miles to arrive in time for a Texas-style Thanksgiving on a cattle ranch near Amarillo. U.S. Route 66, known colloquially as the “Main Street of America” or the “Mother Road” was a major path for those who migrated west. In Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath, the poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, make their way west from Oklahoma to California on U.S. Route 66.

V is for Viking Press

Travels with Charley was published by the Viking Press in mid-summer of 1962, several months before Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

W is for Wanderlust

Steinbeck begins Travels with Charley by describing his wanderlust, saying he’s had a life-long impulse to travel and explore the world.

X is for Xena the Warrior Princess

This entry has nothing to do with John Steinbeck, but I have included it in case there are any women travelers who are having trouble identifying with the adventures of a rugged, broad-shouldered, six-foot-tall writer, and his desire to be seen as a knight-errant (see K). Xena the Warrior Princess reminds me of the title of Debbie Anderson’s best-selling guide for women who travel the open road: Simple Rules for…The Road-Warrior Princess.

Y is for “You can’t go home again”

When Steinbeck reached his birthplace of Salinas, he discovered the truth of Thomas Wolfe’s words “You can’t go home again.” Saying good-bye to his hometown for the last time was a bittersweet experience:

I printed once more on my eyes, south, west, and north, and then we hurried away from the permanent and changeless past where my mother is always shooting a wildcat and my father is always burning his name with his love.

Z is for Zzzzz (under the stars)

Steinbeck reports that camping out with Charley in the American outback — where they enjoyed lots of zzzzz under the stars — was one of the highlights of their trip (though the veracity of that experience is now disputed — see F). But, despite the magnificent setting, both he and Charley often suffered moments of crushing loneliness. Ultimately, man and dog concurred that however much they relished their adventure, home is where the heart is.

So…are you inspired? Can you now see yourself motoring across country in the autumn and/or autumn of your life? And how about attempting a best-selling travelogue? (Or am I still driving you bonkers?!)

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post, a Displaced Q about none else than road trips(!).

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Family visits — 3 universally acknowledged truths by Jane Austen

1 Comment Posted by on September 5, 2011

Summer is the time when displaced people often visit or are visited by their families, and because of the distances involved, this usually means more than just popping round for a quick cup of tea.

As easy air travel is a fairly recent innovation, it’s tempting to think of these lengthy visits as recent also. They’re not, of course. A hundred-mile trip by horse and carriage two hundred years ago to see family was as tiring as a flight from Heathrow to Sydney now, and visits would last several weeks.

It’s only the mode of transport that has changed, though.

Take it from Jane herself.

1. Eliza Bennet Syndrome

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a displaced person in possession of a new abode in slightly exotic location, must be in want of visitors from home.

I feel sorry for Eliza Bennet. Despite marrying the richest man in Derbyshire and living in a house only slightly smaller than that county, she would always bear the burden of her awful relatives.

Even Pemberley wouldn’t have been big enough when they came to visit — and visit they surely would, as Jane Austen’s characters spent much time in the company of relatives scattered around England.

Evidently, it was dangerous to do otherwise – a visit with a mere friend to that iniquitous den, Brighton, resulted in social and financial ruin for Lydia Bennet when she eloped with Mr Wickham.

A decorous horse-and-carriage trip through Derbyshire with a respectable aunt and uncle, however, rewarded her sister Eliza with a good-looking (if emotionally constipated) husband, and her share of his ten thousand a year.

The moral, gentle reader: If you do not wish to be blamed for the consequences of young visitors searching for a good time with unsuitable handsome army officers, ensure that your foreign abode is in a quiet backwater where the only entertainment is weekly bingo in the church hall. Don’t live near a British bar in Ibiza. If you can find a house big enough so the raucous tones of your visiting mother cannot be heard by you or your neighbors, so much the better.

2. Mr Woodhouse Syndrome

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that some people will never visit on your own territory, and when you visit theirs, it is never for long enough to keep them happy.

Some people will never visit you, believing flights only travel in one direction, or that you live somewhere foreign and unhealthy. It is, therefore, your duty to visit them, since you were thoughtless enough to move away in the first place.

Emma Woodhouse’s father fell into this category of people. Although his married daughter, Isabella, lived only sixteen miles away in London, he disliked visiting her because

“…the truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be. It is a dreadful thing to have you forced to live there! so far off!–and the air so bad!”

Instead, to see her father, poor Isabella had to drag her entourage of five children to Highbury, where Mr Woodhouse would offer her a nice welcoming bowl of gruel.

She had nothing to wish…but that the days did not pass so swiftly. It was a delightful visit;–perfect, in being much too short.

Too short for her father, that is. Not Isabella. She was just being polite. Take it from me.

The moral, gentle reader: Bring your own bottle. You’re going to need it, especially if all your folks have to offer is gruel for supper.

3. Fanny Price Syndrome

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the longer you have lived away, the more foreign your home country will feel, and at some point you will ponder the issue of whether it is possible to go home again.

Fanny Price, protagonist of Mansfield Park, and a lesser-known heroine than Eliza Bennet and Emma Woodhouse, understood this better than most.

At the age of nine, Fanny was booted from her home in Portsmouth to live at Mansfield Park with her advantageously-married aunt, to make room for yet another baby in her own family. Desperately homesick and missing her beloved brother William, Fanny is the Cinderella of her adopted family, mocked by her society cousins, and used as whipping-girl and general dogsbody by her two aunts. It wasn’t quite Charles Dickens territory — Fanny was given proper food — but it wasn’t far off.

She did, however, have a raging crush on her cousin, Edmund. Enough said.

Regardless of Fanny’s feelings for her cousin, one might assume that she would one day be glad to leave her aunt’s house and visit her family in Portsmouth. When she eventually did, it was many years after her first arrival, and as her uncle’s punishment for refusing to marry Henry Crawford, an upper-class philanderer. The implication was that, just as Fanny had been raised in society by her uncle, so could she once again descend to her miserable roots if her uncle chose.

While Fanny’s visit in no way persuaded her to marry that cad, Henry, she did realize that her spiritual home was no longer with her parents and siblings. Her parents, whom presumably she had loved at one time, and who had never mistreated her, were a huge disappointment to her. She perceived her mother as

a partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle, a slattern.

So, conveniently forgetting the unkindness of her Aunt Norris and her cousins, and the indolent neglect of her Aunt Bertram,

[Fanny] could think of nothing but Mansfield, its beloved inmates, its happy ways. Every thing where she was was in full contrast to it. The elegance, propriety, regularity, harmony — and perhaps, above all, the peace and tranquility of Mansfield, were brought to her remembrance every hour.

The moral, gentle reader: Are you sure you can never go home — or are you, in fact, suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?

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Img: 1869 engraving of Jane Austen, based on a sketch by her sister, Cassandra Austen (WikiCommons)

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LIBBY’S LIFE: The first three episodes

1 Comment Posted by on September 1, 2011

It’s Life, all right, but not as I know it

April 1
Why is it, just as you get Life under control, Life decides you’re too complacent by far and snatches your security blanket away? And not only snatches it away, but rips it down the middle, throws it in a muddy puddle, and stamps around on it for good measure? Then Life hands you back the pieces and says, “How much in control do you feel now, Libby?”

Three months ago, after a Christmas spent pandering to everyone except me and receiving an assortment of kitchen gadgets instead of the anticipated spa- and nail salon gift vouchers, I decided Enough Was Enough.
This year, I vowed, as I stowed away a new banana slicer and mini-vac, I would no longer be merely “Jack’s Mummy”. No longer would I hand Oliver his packet of sandwiches in the morning and brush a hair from his suit collar, as if I were an extra in I Love Lucy.
This year, I promised myself, I would reclaim an identity that vanished three years ago in a maternity ward in Milton Keynes.
This year, I said, Libby Patrick would return.

Until last night, my pre-motherhood persona was making progress in her resurrection. I had my hair cut and my nails done. I chucked out grey nursing bras and went shopping in Debenhams’ lingerie department. I had lunch with my old boss who told me she would personally kill a fatted calf in celebration of my return to the office.
Then, last night, all progress stopped.

“The company wants me to take a job in another department,” Oliver announced over dinner.
Dinner is supposed to be a time when family members catch up with one another, but as any parent of a two-year-old knows, reality doesn’t work that way. While Oliver recited details of which job in what department, I was only half-listening, more concerned with stopping Jack from feeding Marmite toast to Fergus, our gluten-intolerant dog. So my response to Oliver was something like, “Lovely-darling-and-don’t-even-think-about-it-Jack” before grabbing Fergus by the collar and dragging him into the study where, with a bit of luck, he would eat final demand electricity bills instead.
This half-attention is all too common in our house, and it makes me feel guilty. I try not to feel guilty, but as a stay-at-home mother at present, I must be more supportive of my husband. Or that’s what my mother tells me. God knows what she was doing in the 1970s while other women were burning their bras. Out shopping for whalebone corsets, I imagine.
Oliver, naturally, is all in favour of the idea of supportive wives, and unashamedly sucks up to my mother to get her support as well. He once sent me an email, supposedly a page from a 1950s magazine, telling housewives how to treat their husbands properly. You’ve probably seen it. Wives are advised to hand their husbands a G&T the minute they walk through the door, tidy the children up and the toys away – or perhaps it’s the other way round – and to shut up while Hubby speaks because his opinions are more important. Oliver claimed the email was a joke. I told him it might have been, had I been employed and salaried, but right then, with baby-sick permanently welded to my shoulder, it wasn’t funny and Oliver was fooling no one. Millennia of male chauvinism can’t be wiped out by Harriet Harman, whatever she thinks, or by a few charred Cross Your Heart foundation garments.
But back to Oliver’s announcement. Once I was reseated at the table, Oliver said, “You didn’t hear what I said, did you, Libby?”
“Yes, I did.” I handed Jack a fresh triangle of Marmite toast. He mushed it into a ball and chucked it at the window behind me, where it stuck for a second before sliding down, leaving a greasy trail. “HR wants you to transfer.”
Oliver waved his hand around in a circle. “And…?”
I thought. “And you’ll get a pay rise?” I said hopefully. With his pay rise and my new job, we’d be able to go on holiday this year.
“Plus a relocation package.”
I stopped persuading Jack to eat, and stared across the table at Oliver, who seemed satisfied now he’d got a reaction.
“Relocation package? Relocation to where?” Most of the company’s offices are in Britain – with one exception. Please let it be Birmingham. We wouldn’t have to move house because Oliver could commute. Or Liverpool…or heck, even Aberdeen is commutable these days.
“The Massachusetts office,” Oliver said. “We’ll talk about it.”

And that was the point when Life snatched away my security blanket, hurled it in a swamp, and danced the mashed potato on it.

April 5
We’ve spent the weekend talking about this hypothetical move to America. Well. I say “hypothetical” but it isn’t. And I say “talking” although it isn’t really that, either. Oliver appears to have done most of the talking already with the Relocation Manager in his Human Resources department. (What happened to Personnel Departments? Have we come so far down the line of political correctness that we can’t acknowledge we have personalities?)
So when Oliver promised we’d talk about it, he meant we would talk about the after-effects of the decision, not the decision itself. That seems to be settled and all over, bar the shouting.
Bar the shouting wife.
“It’s a great opportunity,” Oliver says. “One of those chances you’ve got to take in life.”
“But what about me?” I say. “What about my life?”
Now I know how Jack feels during his tantrums. I want to lie on the carpet and kick and scream and shout “No! No! Go away!”
“You’ll have a lovely life. All the wives do.”
“But none of them go to work,” I say. “They’re not allowed to.”
“Why would you want to go to work when you can be at home with Jack?”
I think of my new haircut and freshly accumulated wardrobe of crisp work attire, and murmur, “Oh, I don’t know. Dignity. Independence. Self-worth. Stuff like that.”
Oliver stares at me for a while.
“I don’t understand.”
No. I know he doesn’t.
Instead of lying on the floor and shouting at him to go away, I lie on the sofa and cover my face with a cushion. It’s almost as good.

“We’ll live in a little town near Boston,” Oliver says when my rate of used tissues per minute has slowed. “You know Boston. It’s where the Cheers bar is, and where they filmed Ally McBeal. You love both those programmes.”
I tell him that he loves watching EastEnders, but he wouldn’t want to move to Walford.
He gives me a withering look. “Walford’s a made up place. It’s not real.”
“More real to me than Boston.”
“It wouldn’t be permanent,” Oliver says. “Think of it as a two-year holiday.”
This is pretty rich, coming from him. If I had to pick one characteristic in Oliver that I’d happily trade (excluding spur-of-moment, unilateral decisions to emigrate) it would be the homing pigeon tendencies. He gets culture shock if he goes farther north than Leicester. Take him to Spain and he’ll make a beeline for all the restaurants whose menu items end with “‘n’ chips.” We went to Disney World in Florida the year before Jack was born, and Oliver insisted on wearing his Beckham football shirt everywhere. Well, he and the rest of English-accented Orlando.
I didn’t intend to play the trump card so soon in the game, but my options are running out fast.
“You do know,” I say, “that they don’t sell roast chicken-flavoured crisps over there? No Quavers or Skips? No Hula Hoops?”
Oliver opens his mouth as if to say something, then shuts it again. For a moment, he looks uncertain. Is it possible our future teeters upon a specific combination of E-numbers and MSG?
Then he smiles; an indulgent smile, the sort I give Jack when he’s done something unbearably cute and naïve, and I know that even the threat of no Skips or Quavers to satisfy the midnight munchies isn’t going to work.
“Libby, love. It’s Boston. They have their own fantastic food. We don’t need chips.” Chips? Lord help us. He’s into the lingo already. “There’s lobster and crab cakes, and – what’s it called? Clam chunder.”
Not quite into the lingo, then.
“Chowder.”
“Whatever. My point is, who needs crap like prawn cocktail crisps when you can have the real deal fresh from the ocean there?”
I shake my head, resigned, knowing our fate is decided for the next two years. Oliver is basing a three-thousand-mile upheaval on…seafood.
And oh. Did I mention he’s allergic to fish?

April 19
Oliver and I are keeping quiet about the move until plans are definite. We each have different reasons; he doesn’t want to lose face if it doesn’t happen, and I want to pretend it won’t happen at all.
It’s ironic, the way we’ve switched roles. I used to be the one who liked going abroad and trying new food, whereas he’d eat burger-au-E-coli twice a day for a fortnight rather than pollute his digestive system with local cuisine. Once, in Ibiza, I tried to get him to eat a piece of morcilla. “Oooh, no, not that foreign stuff, thank you,” he said, shuddering as if he was a contestant on Fear Factor and I was trying to tempt him with deep-fried cockroach. Thing is, he didn’t realise it was Spanish sausage. He thought it was black pudding. Lancashire black pudding was foreign enough for Oliver.
But now it’s me dragging my heels about going abroad, while he’s suddenly turned into Gordon-bleeding-Ramsay, evangelising about fresh local produce that brings him out in a rash.
Calm. Breathe.
It’s difficult to keep this a secret, though. Take today, when Jack and I are at playgroup.
Carol Hunter corners me as I’m struggling to get Jack’s coat off.
Carol’s the sort of woman you’re glad to leave behind in the office rat race when you go on maternity leave. You think you’re entering a cocoon of babies, teddy bears, and Johnson’s products, unsullied by bossy women with expensive highlights. Then you discover these women have not only infiltrated your baby-powdered haven but established their own Mafia, ruling the playgroup, PTA, and school governing board.
Carol’s the Don of the local ring.
“Libby,” she says in a confidential tone, gripping me by the elbow in case I make a run for it. “Libby. We need to talk about your volunteer record. It’s somewhat…threadbare.”
Oh, hell. Everyone with a child in playgroup is supposed to sign up to help on a regular basis. That’s the idea. But what actually happens is you volunteer once or twice, spend two hours smiling through gritted teeth while Carol or one of her captains micromanages you in the art of finger-painting, and then forever after keep a low profile when volunteers are needed. There’s a lot of Mafia moaning goes on about it, of course. Usually over skinny lattes in Starbucks, while their little darlings sprinkle brown sugar packets on the floor, about how it’s always the same people who do all the work, and how this playgroup wouldn’t survive if it weren’t for Carol and her chums. But you ignore it. These women used to get their kicks playing the office martyr in their pre-baby lives, and they’d hate to be deprived of their sackcloths and ashes now.
“You’ve only done three sessions since last October,” Carol goes on, clamping down harder on my arm. “Can I put you down for the Play-Doh table next week, with Angie? Then two sessions in May, and a couple in June?”
I cough. “All with Angie?” Frankly, I’d rather sign up for evening classes in embalming than for six playgroup sessions with Captain Angie, who can’t go five minutes without dropping into conversation that she went to school with Supernanny’s cousin.
And then it strikes me. “Tell you what,” I say. “Let’s make it easy. I’ll do all of July, twice a week, until the schools finish for summer. Six sessions. How’s that?”
Carol opens and shuts her mouth a few times, but no sounds emerge, which is pretty satisfying. It’s not often she’s lost for words. No doubt she’s been revving up for a big fight about this, probably culminating in a hit job in Starbucks. Remind me to check the cisterns for firearms next time I’m in there.
“Fan-tast-ic,” she eventually murmurs, and wafts off to persecute a new mother of twins.
It’s all I can do to stop myself from shouting, “Because come July, Carol, I will most likely be eating lobster on the other side of the Atlantic, and not even you and your molls will be able to drag me back to the Play-Doh table.”
It’s as good a reason as any to emigrate, I suppose.

Want to read more? Head on over to Kate Allison’s own site, where you can find out more about Libby and the characters of Woodhaven, and where you can buy Taking Flight, the first year of Libby’s Life — now available as an ebook.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of the week’s posts from The Displaced Nation. Sign up for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Image: Travel Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Me and my shadow – My life with Libby

7 Comments Posted by on August 25, 2011

I’ve been writing Libby’s Life for about six months, and at first it was serialized on my own blog, Marmite and Fluff (now sadly neglected). When The Displaced Nation went live, it became part of this Website instead.

While I could go into navel-gazing details of how I came up with Libby, Oliver, Sandra, et al, it wouldn’t be very interesting for anyone. For example, the short answer to how I came up with Sandra, the mother-in-law from hell, is easy: a deadline-induced state of adrenalized panic.

As for the fictitious town of Woodhaven, Massachusetts, well, I’m very familiar with the place. It’s the setting of my work-in-progress novel (which at the moment seems very far from anything resembling in-progress) and some of the characters from that manuscript have already appeared in Libby’s Life. Melissa Harvey — now Melissa Harvey Connor — is the girl I love to hate. Frankie Gianni, of the Maxwell Plum restaurant, is also an old friend of mine, along with his pig-toting mother, Carla. Poor Carla. She’s had a lot to cope with over the years. She wasn’t always the sad figure you met in Episode 11.

More characters will come along in due course, as Libby settles into life in this northern town.

For now, though, I’m going to tell you a bit more about our plucky little heroine. It’s easy to dismiss her as “just a housewife” but as anyone can see if they have read the last episode, she’s a fighter.

It would be a mistake to underestimate Libby.

I first met Libby in March this year. I was visiting friends in Milton Keynes, and had run out of reading material, so headed for a book shop. Libby was there at the same time, with her two-year-old, Jack — an adorable little thing, clutching a stuffed red car — and she struck me as a woman who had lost her way in life. Lost her identity, you could say, among the shelves of Pampers and Johnson’s baby products.

You can tell a lot about people from the books they buy. Although Libby and I met in the chick lit section, she already had three self-help books in her shopping basket. “Finding yourself after motherhood.” “How to be who you want to be.” “Living and Working in America.”

“Are you moving to America?” I asked.

To my discomfort, her eyes filled with tears. “I haven’t any choice,” she said.

In my experience, there is only one cure for the moving upheaval blues — coffee and lots of chocolate croissants. I took the books from her.

“We’ll come back later for those. Today’s your lucky day. You’ve met the right person to talk to.”

We went to Starbucks and, over a large vanilla latte and Danish pastry, Libby started to open up. Perhaps she was rather too open, considering we had only just met, but sometimes it’s easier to confide in a stranger than in your closest friend.

Her life had been turned upside down, she said.

She admitted that she was tired of being just a wife, just a mother, just a daughter. She had been a stay at home mother for three years, and in that time had felt her personality slowly being leached away.

Oliver had strongly encouraged her to stay home with Jack — Oliver wanted Jack to have the family life his own mother had never given him — but now Libby needed something else. Something for herself, beside finger painting and Play-doh.

She had just put the wheels in motion by talking to her old boss about returning to work when Oliver dropped the bombshell.

“I get my life in order again, and this happens. Massachusetts!” If Libby had said “Guantanamo Bay” she couldn’t have said it with more distaste. “This summer! Yes, I wanted a change in my life, but not like this. This is Oliver’s choice, not mine, but I don’t feel as if I have any right to object. Do you think he’s having a midlife crisis, even though he’s only thirty-three?”

I watched her stuff a piece of Danish pastry in Jack’s mouth. Libby has dainty hands that she waves about a lot, so you’re always half-reaching to move drinks cups out of her way. Her hair is in a mousy blonde pixie cut, and she has big blue eyes that make her look like a Disney cartoon animal. She’s Tinkerbell, without the attitude problem.

Personally, I thought her husband was not so much having a midlife crisis as taking advantage of a temporary imbalance of relationship power that, at the moment, favoured him.

The balance would shift one day, because pendulums of all kinds swing, but I knew it was pointless to tell Libby that her day of power would come.

“Massachusetts is a nice place,” I said. “It feels a lot like England, in many ways. You want my advice? Go. Enjoy the experience. Think of it as a door opening, not one closing. Besides –” she had already told me a little about Oliver’s mother “–wouldn’t it be a good thing to move away from your mother-in-law? The view from 3000 miles has to be an improvement.”

Libby nodded. I could see her watching the proverbial glass become half full, not half empty.

“But what will I do with my time there?” she asked. “Jack will be off to nursery school soon.”

I hadn’t the heart to tell her that most women I’d seen in her situation seemed to fill their time with serial pregnancies, so instead, I said, “You could start a blog.”

“A blog,” she repeated. “Yes, I could.” She thought a little more, gazing out of the window of the traffic.

“I’ll call it Libby’s Life,” she said. “I like the sound of that.”

Stay tuned for another Return Trip post tomorrow.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of the week’s posts from The Displaced Nation. Sign up for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Img: Map of the World – Salvatore Vuono

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CLASSIC DISPLACED WRITING: Joy in the place — Elizabeth von Arnim

5 Comments Posted by on August 2, 2011

The novelist Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941) wrote many enchanting books, all of which were autobiographical to some extent, linked to persons or places she knew.

But does that necessarily mean that Elizabeth — born Mary Annette, nicknamed May, she called herself “Elizabeth” upon becoming a professional writer — led an enchanted life?

Yes and no. By all accounts, she was an enchanting person herself, constantly delighting other people with her sharp wit.

She also kept enchanting company: E.M. Forster was tutor to her children, Katherine Mansfield was her adopted cousin, and H.G. Wells was one of her lovers.

Displaced almost from birth (she was born in Kirribilli Point, Australia, and then moved to England at the age of three), she made a life-long habit of flitting from one enchanting locale to the next.

Having spent her formative years in London, she moved to Pomerania in Prussia (Germany) for her first marriage, where she raised five children.

Upon the death of her husband in 1910, she made her home in the Valais, Switzerland, living in a glamorous house, Chalet Soleil, which she’d built from her riches as an author.

With the failure of her second marriage, Elizabeth zigzagged between homes in the United States and Europe.

She died in Charleston, South Carolina.

A full measure of sorrows

But a peripatetic life isn’t always a charmed one, as many of us expats and former expats can attest. As her life progressed, Elizabeth experienced a full measure of sorrows.

Her first marriage — to a domineering Prussian count — wasn’t particularly happy. She nicknamed him the Man of Wrath, and they separated several years before his death.

Her second marriage, to Frank Russell, elder brother of Bertrand, was even more miserable (he proved to be a despotic egoist).

Her only true love she met when she was 54 — and he was nearly 30 years younger. (They never married.)

She also suffered the grievous deaths of a daughter and a brother.

By the time she died, Elizabeth was estranged from most of her children, crippled with arthritis, and almost forgotten by her adoring public.

Her only devoted companion was her dog, Billy.

Escape artist par excellence

But despite these tribulations, Elizabeth remained throughout her life, in the words of gardening writer Deborah Kellaway,

a steadfast hedonist, firmly suppressing sorrows. … Her journals and letters repeatedly record moments of happiness, usually associated with sunny days.

As Elizabeth once wrote in a letter to one of her daughters,

“What I really am by nature is an escapist.”

Thus what we can learn from Elizabeth’s life — and from her many autobiographical books — is the art of escaping into happier worlds.

As Kellaway explains:

[The heroines of her novels] escape from richness into the simple life, or from conventional home life into foreign travel; they escape from houses into caravans.

The most famous example, of course, is Elizabeth’s 1922 novel, The Enchanted April — from which we’ve taken our theme of enchantment on the blog this month.

As everyone knows who has read that book — or, more likely, seen the 1992 film or the 2003 Broadway play — four women who share only their unhappiness and a love of wisteria flee 1920s London and converge in Portofino, Italy, on a magical medieval villa overlooking the Mediterranean.

Simple pleasures are the best?

But while Italian castles can certainly be a tonic — if offered one, I’d be off like a shot — what most people don’t know is that Elizabeth was equally fond of much simpler escapes. In the first two books that made her reputation as a writer, the heroine escapes her marital, motherly and household duties by venturing into a German garden, set in a wide landscape.

Here is the most lyrical passage from the second of these, The Solitary Summer (1899):

Yesterday morning I got up at three o’clock and stole through the echoing passages and strange dark rooms, undid with trembling hands the bolts of the door to the verandah, and passed out into a wonderful, unknown world. I stood for a few minutes motionless on the steps, almost frightened by the awful purity of nature when all the sin and ugliness is shut up and asleep, and there is nothing but the beauty left. It was quite light, yet a bright moon hung in the cloudless, grey-blue sky; the flowers were all awake, saturating the air with scent; and a nightingale sat on a hornbeam quite close to me, in loud raptures at the coming of the sun. …

It was wonderfully quiet, and the nightingale on the hornbeam had everything to itself as I sat motionless watching that glow in the east burning redder; wonderfully quiet, and so wonderfully beautiful because one associates daylight with people, and voices and bustle, and hurrying to and fro, and the dreariness of working to feed our bodies, and feeding our bodies that we may be able to work to feed them again; but here was the world wide awake and yet only for me, all the fresh pure air only for me, all the fragrance breathed only by me, not a living soul hearing the nightingale but me, the sun in a few moments coming up to warm only me…

A lovely garden at just the right time of day — as I know from my own experience of enduring many city summers*, that’s all it sometimes takes to escape into happiness.

*On that note, I’d like to recommend a walk on the High Line in early morning or late afternoon, to anyone living in or traveling to New York City this month…

QUESTION: What does it take for you to escape the dog days of summer into happiness: a trip to Italy, a walk in the garden — or something else?

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post, on our new weekly newsletter, The Displaced Dispatch.

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Youth writer Gabrielle Wang’s characters solve cross-cultural conundrums with magic and aplomb

9 Comments Posted by on July 27, 2011

The spirit of Pocahontas has been haunting The Displaced Nation this month, lending a helping hand to anyone who feels stymied by the strange customs they’ve encountered in other lands.

This precocious Native American girl appears to have been naturally gifted in openness and tolerance — else how could she have become an intermediary between her father’s tribes and the Jamestown settlers at age 10?

The majority of us, however, are not naturals when it comes to cross-cultural relations. We could use some basic training, preferably while still young.

As suggested in one of this month’s posts, one solution might be to absorb the whole of Harry Potter — all those tales of discrimination against Half-bloods and Muggles.

But not every youth can identify with a universe that is governed by the laws of who’s magic and who isn’t. Take Pocahontas, for instance. If she prayed for magic in her dealings with the white invaders, it was most likely for herself, never mind anyone else.

Perhaps, then, I have her to thank for guiding me towards Melbourne-based author Gabrielle Wang, whose books for children and young people feature characters who in many ways resemble the feisty Anne of Green Gables, Pollyanna or Calpurnia Tate — but with a further twist: Wang’s heroines are always non-white, Chinese or some mix. They are culturally marginalized.

Wang’s very first book, The Garden of Empress Cassia (to be published for the first time in the U.S. this fall) involves a heroine, Mimi, who feels ashamed of being Chinese until she discovers a a box of magic pastels that enables her to draw, and then enter, the garden of the Empress Cassia — a transformative experience.

Wang’s latest heroine, Poppy, is even more unusual: she’s a half-Chinese, half-Aborigine girl who lived in the 19th century. Poppy’s Aboriginal mother died when she was a baby, and her Chinese father disappeared before she was born. When her brother, Gus, runs away to look for gold, Poppy decides to follow. Disguising herself as a boy, she stows away on a paddle steamer and keeps in touch with Gus through a secret code and Chinese symbols.

Wang’s books are targeted at the youth market, but adults are very fond of them as well. Here’s what one reviewer had to say of her first book in the Poppy series:

I’m sure young girls living in Australia who are interested in their country’s history will love this book, but as an adult living in America, I really enjoyed it too!

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Gabrielle Wang in person — at a congee restaurant in New York City’s Chinatown. Here’s how our conversation went:

Can you tell me a little about your background?
I’m a fourth-generation Chinese Australian on my mother’s side and first generation on my father’s. I live in Melbourne, where I’ve been a professional writer of children’s and young adult books for nine years. I’ve written ten books published by Penguin Books Australia, and a picture book published by Blackdog Books, now an imprint of Walker.

All my novels involve cross-cultural issues as that is my background. Being brought up in Australia and knowing little about my own heritage, I felt was a tremendous disadvantage. I was ashamed of looking different. I couldn’t speak Chinese and knew little of the beliefs and customs of China. Now, when I look back at that period in my life I know that if I’d been steeped in the culture of China, I would have grown up proud of my heritage. It was only when I left school that I realized that belonging to two cultures was an advantage and began learning Mandarin.

My latest books are being released this year three months apart. There are four in the Our Australian Girl series about a half-Chinese half-Aboriginal girl named Poppy.

Right now I’m working on a ghost short story for a Penguin anthology as well as thinking about my next novel, called The Wish Bird.

This month, our blog has dedicated many of its posts to Pocahontas, who was a member of the original displaced peoples in North America. Are the stories of the Native Americans and Australia’s Aborigines very similar?
Definitely, there are many similarities. But my impression of the Native Americans is of a more warring people — at least that’s how they’re often portrayed in the old cowboy-and-Indian films. I’m probably stereotyping here. The Aborigines were also driven off their hunting grounds. Many were slaughtered by the squatters while others starved to death or died from disease. It was a tragic time in Australian history which carried through even to the 1960s. The scars and the injustices still exist today.

The European settlement of Australia occurred at least a century later than that of North America. Were Australia’s settlers still influenced by the ideal of the Noble Savage, “the good wild man,” in their encounters with the natives?
The squatters of the 1800s looked down upon the Aborigines. They had no idea that the Indigenous Australians had a highly advanced and complex culture and belief system. And by the 1850s and 1860s, when my Poppy stories take place, the ideal of the Noble Savage never crossed anyone’s mind. At that time, large numbers of people from all over the world went to Australia to look for gold, not to discover a new land.

Turning to your Poppy books, I noticed that you employed the nature trope that’s associated with the Aborigines. Poppy uses the Southern Cross to guide her travels, follows water birds, eats wild raspberries and honey-flavoured sap-sucking bugs…
The Aborigines’ belief system is closely linked to the land they inhabit and to the animals in their environment. They have animal totems and there are sacred places all around Australia. Unfortunately, most of these sacred sites are not in the hands of the local Indigenous people and have been lost or desecrated. But if you go and visit the known ones, like I have, you can still feel a tremendous power and energy in the landscape.

When I was on a writing/walking trek through Central Australia near Alice Springs, we camped, with the permission of the local Indigenous tribe, on a sacred site. It was an amazing experience.

I am very interested in the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang, the I Ching and Daoism – which are not that dissimilar to the beliefs of the Indigenous Australians and their relationship with nature. The Aborigines are also like the Chinese in that they have an advanced plant medicine system.

Was it difficult to think through how an Aborigine child might have felt back then?
In my story, Poppy was born on a Christian mission, so she knows very little about her own culture. I am not an expert on Aborigine culture, so I was careful not to step over the line. I had several Aboriginal advisors who I consulted with. John Sandy Atkinson is an elder for the Bangerang tribe and Maxine Briggs is the Koorie Liaison officer at the State Library of Victoria. They were invaluable to me while writing the Poppy series. As a Chinese person, I know how wrong some authors can be when writing about a culture they have little knowledge of. It is easy to misconstrue and misunderstand things so I was careful to avoid this.

Since you’re so interested in the topic of portraying other cultures, you may find it interesting that Maxine Briggs lent me Werner Herzog’s film Where the Green Ants Dream just so I could see how NOT to portray another culture. The film as you may know had to do with a dispute between a mining company and the local Indigenous tribes in the Australian desert.

I noticed in reading some excerpts that the white people Poppy meets behave quite decently. Did you make them like that on purpose?
Race is a highly sensitive subject and sometimes it’s difficult to strike a good balance. In Poppy’s time, the 1860s, racial prejudice towards Aborigines was at an all-time high. But I’m always aware of my audience — children 8-11 years old. When you write for young people you have a responsibility. It is important to be positive; otherwise, the same prejudices can begin all over again.

Up until now, you’ve created Chinese heroines for your book. What inspired you to create a character who was only half-Chinese?
I wanted to write about the period when my maternal great-grandfather came to Victoria to join the Gold Rush. I also wanted to highlight the plight of the Indigenous population during that time when white settlement expanded at such an alarming rate. Before 1834, around 100,000 Aboriginal people lived in the State of Victoria. By 1860, with the influx of white settlers and the discovery of gold, this number had fallen to less than 2000. That figure is shocking.

I think I’d also been influenced by the recent consciousness in Australia about the injustices done to the Aborigines. Beginning in 1869, the Australian government rounded up the Aborigines into missions (as already mentioned, Poppy is from one such mission) and began removing some of the children — the ones who were of mixed race — from their families to work as indentured servants for white families. I’m talking about the so-called stolen generations. If you’ve seen the film Rabbit-Proof Fence, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

It’s a big issue right now in Australia — and is finally being recognized as a national tragedy. The former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, presented a formal apology in 2008 for this misguided policy. It was a long time coming.

To sum up: I could have just written about a Chinese child, but I wanted to stretch myself and imagine a child who was half Chinese, half Aborigine. It is important for young people to walk in the shoes of someone who is different — who might be of a different culture, race and skin color. Only by doing this can we empathize with others.

Were you able to find any examples of half-Chinese, half-Aboriginal children on which you could base the story?
In my research there were no written records in Victoria of mixed race children at that time. But there’s no doubt they would have existed as the Chinese gold diggers were all men. They left their wives and family back in China.

So an Aboriginal character was a first for you. Was it also the first time a non-Aboriginal person had written a story for kids?
No. The highly respected and wonderful Australian children’s author Patricia Wrightson may have been the first. But I’m certainly the first non-white Australian author to write about an Aboriginal character.

Is it important that you’re a “non-white”?
I think I was able to imagine the Aboriginal child’s situation quite easily because I know what it feels like to be an outsider, and to suffer racial prejudice. I was the only Asian child in my school in Melbourne and I only saw white faces in the street. I always felt embarrassed when my parents came to school as my mother would sometimes appear in traditional dress, and my father didn’t speak English well, which I found embarrassing. Of course, it’s changed now as more Chinese have migrated to Australia, but back then, Chinese Australians were real outsiders.

You have been an expat for several years, living in Taiwan and then Mainland China. Can you tell us what that felt like?
Strangely enough, before my first visit to China in 1977, I always said that I was going back to China even though I had never been there before. Perhaps this is true of many children of migrants. When I actually went to Taiwan and China to live, I was at a disadvantage because I couldn’t speak Chinese very well and therefore was never fully accepted. Language is so important.

There were a couple of incidents in particular that made me realize how difficult it would be living in China — apart from the difficulty of learning the language, that is.

Once in Taiwan, I was invited to a friend’s house. It was her birthday. I brought a gift of a necklace, but was so surprised when she didn’t open the gift, nor did she acknowledge its receipt with a thank-you. I thought, how rude! I had no idea that in China, it’s rude to open gifts in front of the giver.

The other incident occurred in Mainland China, when I was invited to a banquet by a friend of my mother’s. She sat next to me and kept filling my plate. In Australia, it’s impolite not to finish the food on your plate, so I kept eating what was given to me, only to have it filled again. Finally, when I couldn’t fit in another morsel of food, I put my chopsticks down and sat back. My hostess breathed an audible sigh of relief. In China, of course, people like to show their hospitality by giving their guests more food than they can possibly eat.

Your personal story is inspirational as you never fancied yourself a writer.
When I was younger, I didn’t think I could write at all. I failed Year 12 English and had to repeat the whole year because I wanted to study Graphic Design at University. When I became interested in children’s books, it was to illustrate them not to write the words. But in the year 2000 I took a writing course and discovered I had hidden potential. We all do, I think. And it’s never too late to find out what it is. I explore that theme a lot in my books, especially The Hidden Monastery.

As part of Pocahontas month, we’ve been coming up with proverbs for those who wish to spend their time abroad getting to know other cultures. Can you give us one proverb based on your own experiences?

“If you want to know what it means to be a migrant or a person who is displaced by outside forces, then live in — don’t just visit — another country where you cannot speak the language.”

To that I would add:

“If you can, make it a country where people have skin of a different color to yours. Then, and only then, can you understand what it means to be an outsider.”

Gabrielle Wang’s book The Garden of Empress Cassia will be published in USA by Kane Miller this September. You can also visit her Web site at www.gabriellewang.com.

Images: Gabrielle Wang at Congee Bowery, NYC (by Susumu Awanohara); front cover of Wang’s first Poppy book; and front cover of the about-to-be-released American edition of her very first work, The Garden of the Empress Cassia.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s installment of our displaced fictional heroine, Libby, who learns more about her bête noire, the realtor Melissa. Were her initial misgivings about Melissa justified?

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

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In fiction and in life, this expat pursues paradise

12 Comments Posted by on July 20, 2011

As regular readers of The Displaced Nation will know, Pocahontas is the heroine of our blog this month. Sprightly, playful, well-featured and solicitous — unencumbered by the corrupting influences of civilization, in tune with Nature — she, and other women of her ilk, conformed to the vision Europeans held of the New World.

They were also the subject of many a European man’s romantic fantasy.

After meeting a Pocahontas, a European could brag to his friends back home that he’d found Paradise on Earth.

Flash forward almost four hundred years, and we find something similar going on with certain groups of international travelers. I speak of those who are restlessly searching for places that have yet to be touched by Western materialism and other corrupting ideas — where people lead simpler lives and are more decent.

And for male travelers, that vision usually encompasses finding their own Pocahontas: a native woman with long, dark hair, who unlike her Western sisters, still knows how to care for a man…

Mark DamaroydAgainst this background, we welcome author Mark Damaroyd to The Displaced Nation. As an expat in Thailand, Damaroyd lives — and has written about — the utopian life to which no small number of men who’ve ventured into foreign countries aspire.

His first work of fiction, published in 2010, is called Pursuit to Paradise. Described by one reviewer as a “tale of romantic intrigue that keeps the pages turning,” the novel takes place in Thailand and the UK, and centers around an Englishman’s relationship with an exotic Thai woman.

Mark Damaroyd has kindly agreed to answer some of my questions about his life and book, and about the challenges of cross-cultural relationships more generally. After that, the floor is open — be sure to chime in!

Can you tell us something about yourself?
Firstly, ML, thank you so much for your invitation to be interviewed by The Displaced Nation.

I’m English, born in Cambridge, but not lucky enough to go to university there. I spent many years in Devon, a beautiful county in Southwest England. I still sometimes miss the thatched country pubs, pasties and cider.

Bitten by the travel bug in 1968 — yes, I really am that old! — I traveled overland from England to India in a camper van. You may have heard about the “Hippie Era,” the “Make love not war” days. I was a short-haired, beardless hippie.

In those days, we got our thrills journeying as a group through countries like the former Yugoslavia, Iran and Afghanistan — so many treasured memories.

Since those days, I’ve lived and worked in Australia, Spain, Portugal and Thailand, taking periods out to sail round the world in a couple of the old passenger ships, now out of service.

Back home in 2005, I found myself jobless at an age where finding new employment was just about impossible. In the wake of failed marriages that produced three offspring, adult and doing their own thing now, I packed my bags, gave up everything in the UK and headed for Thailand, where sales jobs in the holiday industry happened to be available.

I met my Thai bride-to-be in 2007, married the next year, inherited two stepsons, now aged ten and five, and live happily in Isaan, Northeast Thailand, not far from the Laos border.

Having retired a couple of years ago, after a lifetime in sales and marketing, I decided to write Pursuit to Paradise my first published novel, released in 2010.

If I ever get the next book off the drawing board, it’ll be about an English family uprooting to make a new life in Thailand. I envision it as a comedy drama, suitable for family reading.

What made you decide to write a novel rather than a travel book about Thailand?
I’ve always enjoyed writing fiction; a couple of earlier manuscripts still sit on the shelf gathering dust. In addition, there are numerous travel books about the country. I doubt I’d find a loophole in that area.

And why did you decide on the genre of romance?
I sort of fell into that genre by accident. I started out intending to write a mildly erotic action adventure. As the characters developed, the plot veered more towards romance and relationships.

Did you have a real island in mind when creating the “paradise island” of Koh Pimaan?
The Gulf of Thailand has several islands, mostly with similar features. But, having lived on Koh Samui, I think the settings for the book resemble that island more than the rest.

Koh Samui? That’s the kind of place where supermodels go because they like the snorkeling.
It even gets Angelina Jolie popping over for tattoos!

Tell us a little more about your protagonist, Ben. To what extent is he based on your own experiences? Is there anything of you in him?
Ben is hotheaded – I created him that way. He’s also fearful of failure in business and relationships. When he finds himself in a bit of a predicament, his snap reaction hurtles him into an adventure beggaring belief. I must admit there’s a bit of myself in him.

Do you think that most Western men who go to Thailand in search of love and adventure will relate to Ben?
Some Western men who come to Thailand will relate to him. It’s a fact this country attracts men of all ages. Older men come seeking new partners, often ending up with women many years younger. The media understandably focuses on this aspect in order to achieve a bit of sensationalism. But there are also younger guys in their 20’s to 40’s who find the lifestyle, business opportunities and the local girls suit them.

And now let’s talk about the women in the book. Again, did you have any real-life models in mind for Ben’s English ex-girlfriend, Gail, and his Thai love interest, Nataya?
No, there were absolutely no real-life models for these women. I portrayed Gail as something of a nuisance purely to add drama to the story. She’s linked with another character causing headaches for Ben. Nataya can be contrasted with her best friend, Kanita: they have completely different personalities and backgrounds – essential to the story. Western men who are keen to meet Thai girls think they all have beautiful faces, long, shiny black hair, flashing white teeth and slender bodies. The girls in my book fit this description. Obviously, the nation’s females aren’t all like this!

Would it have been possible to write the same kind of novel without exploring the “steamy” side of life in Thailand including erotic moviemaking?
The story could work without mentioning the steamy side of life. To be honest, it was a late decision to introduce erotic moviemaking. I guess it occurred on a day when I felt bored with the plot! However, by adding this element, several new characters emerged that seemed to fit in nicely.

Is the sex industry integral to life in Thailand, especially as seen from the foreign perspective?
Although the glitzy nightlife is famous, Thailand has an abundance of fascinating places to visit far off the beaten track. Many tourists come purely for the history and culture.

Whom did you see as the primary audience for your book?
Originally, I aimed the book at a male readership made up of expats and those with connections or interest in Thailand. That was before I secured a publishing contract with an American company specializing in romantic fiction for women. Their marketing focused on American female readers, so we ended up with a mishmash promotion. Now the book has a new publisher in Bangkok, whose target is much the same as my initial plan.

Will the book ever be translated into Thai?
No.

How does your book compare to other Westerners’ novels about Thailand?
Over the years, many Western men have written novels concentrating almost exclusively on relationships with Thai girls. Generally, they break down into subject matter best described as Sexy Encounters, Finding My Thai Dream Girl, or Humorous/Amorous Adventures. Some authors have moved away from these well-worn genres, producing quality thrillers and mysteries, often set in Bangkok.

A number of female writers have created brilliant stories based on their own experience of life in Thailand. A fine example is Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind, written by American Carol Hollinger back in 1965 but still relevant, with a reprint in 2000. Her honest and lively anecdotes of this exotic country and its people, and the difficulties and delights foreigners have in adjusting to life in a completely new environment, is refreshingly different.

In my book, I’ve attempted to incorporate a little sensuality, humor, action, mystery and romance. Some scenes are set in England, providing a sharply contrasting backdrop to the sunny paradise locations concealing shady goings on. A strong subplot should keep the reader guessing to the end.

This month, The Displaced Nation has been exploring Pocahontas as a symbol for cross-cultural communications and marriages. In your experience, what are the biggest sources of miscommunication between Westerners and Thais — and can you give some examples?
A huge problem arises from language barriers. Some Westerners make no effort to learn Thai, yet expect their partners to learn English – or whatever the chap’s native language happens to be. Amazingly, Thais manage to grasp passable English extremely quickly, eager to improve communication. Another source of miscommunication is lack of respect or understanding of cultural differences. In Thailand, the Buddhist religion teaches respect, love and compassion. Top of the list is respect for parents and elders. Love and compassion encompasses providing financial support should it be required at any stage in life, as well as physically taking care of parents in old age. Foreigners often misinterpret this obligation, depicting Thai women as money-grabbers. Countless numbers of girls working bars in tourist areas do so because they have no other way to earn money. Yes, it’s fair to say some do attempt to exploit Westerners. On the other hand, many Westerners take advantage, so why accuse the girls?

Finally, from your own experience, what would you say is the top challenge of an interracial, intercultural marriage, and can you recommend any coping strategies?
In the majority of Western-Thai relationships, one partner will be living in a foreign land. The ability to accept that many things are going to be a million miles removed from your own preferences, habits and requirements is essential. Your partner will need to accept that you, too, have some cultural differences. You may not want to eat rice for breakfast, and your partner may consider sausage, bacon, eggs, beans and hash browns a trifle unhealthy. If you see rising early to houseclean or pray to Buddha as unnecessary, then bury your head in the pillow and enjoy an extra hour in bed, knowing the chores are in capable hands.

Being willing to give and take, and having a genuine desire to understand a different culture, will be rewarded by firm bonding and appreciation. Never state that your own way of life is — or was — the best. We can all glean much from each other if we care to do so.

Can you sum it all up in a Native American-style proverb?
“Blending the familiar with the unfamiliar can lead to a more purposeful existence.”

img: Book cover and photo of Mark Damaroyd in Isaan.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s installment of our displaced fictional heroine, Libby, who has escaped from her prison of cardboard boxes and is busy exploring her new habitat of small town New England.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

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CLASSIC DISPLACED WRITING: Ian Fleming

7 Comments Posted by on June 24, 2011

As The Displaced Nation has been serializing Sebastian Doggart’s article (part 1 and part 2) about visiting Ian Feming’s Goldeneye estate in Jamaica, it seemed like a good time to take a brief look at Fleming’s writing with a Classic Displaced Writing Post.

Sebastian’s posts have been concerned with Fleming and his love of Jamaica, and while Jamaica and the Caribbean is used numerous times as a backdrop in the Bond novels, through the course of the novels Bond visits dozens of  different countries that Fleming has to conjure up for the reader.

What is clear on reading Fleming is just how important food and drink is to Fleming in order to allow him to describes new and exotic (at least for the vast majority of readers in austerity Britain of that time) locations. I don’t think it’s unfair of me to say that Fleming fetishes food and drink. At times, reading a Bond novel is like reading food porn. While the Bond films now do an expert and cynical job of name dropping as many brands as they can in 2 hours, the Bond novels don’t shy away with the name dropping of food or of alcoholic brand names. The Bond of the novels isn’t solely a Martini drinker. He’s aways one to try anything local that’s on offer. In Jamaica he’ll drink a glass of Red Stripe, in the US he’ll have a Millers Highlife beer. Throughout the novels Fleming uses food and drink to convey an alien culture, demonstrate social status, show Bond’s mood and his sophistication and ease with the world.

For ten minutes Bond stood and gazed out across the sparkling water barrier between Europe and Asia, then he turned back into the room, now bright with sunshine, and telephoned for his breakfast. His English was not understood, but his French at last got through. He turned on a cold bath and shaved patiently with cold water and hoped that the exotic breakfast he had ordered would not be a fiasco.

He was not disappointed. The yoghourt, in a blue china bowl, was a deep yellow and with the consistency of thick cream. The green figs, ready peeled, were bursting with ripeness, and the Turkish coffee was jet black and with the burned taste that showed it had been freshly ground. Bond ate the delicious meal on a table drawn up beside the open-window.

From Russia with Love (1957)

Video of some more examples –

STAY TUNED for Monday’s post, when guest blogger Sezin Koehler riffs off Alice in Wonderland to capture the curious, unreal aspects of her life in Prague.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

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RANDOM NOMAD: Helena Halme, Book Seller, Fashion Addict & Writer

9 Comments Posted by on June 15, 2011

Born in: Tampere, Finland
Passport: Finnish (only, and proud of it!)
Countries lived in: Sweden (Stockholm): 1971-74; Finland (Turku): 1975; Finland (Helsinki): 1975-84; England (Portsmouth): 1984-86, 1988; England (Plymouth): 1987; England (Wiltshire): 1989-2010; England (London): 2011-present
Cyberspace coordinates: Helena’s London Life | A Nordic view on style, fashion, art, literature, food and love in the city (blog)

What made you leave your homeland in the first place?
I left Finland for the first time as a 10-year-old with my family due to my father’s work, then moved back again for the same reason. And then I left Finland for good to marry my English husband. I’ve written 48 blog posts — soon to be a Kindle book called The Englishman — about how I came to be in England.

Is anyone else in your immediate family displaced?
My father is the only member of the family who still lives in Finland. My mother lives in Stockholm (she is remarried), and my sister lives also in Sweden (she married a Swedish man). Oh dear, that makes it sound as though we are are very man-dependent women, but I can assure you we’re strong and independent — really.

Describe the moment when you felt most displaced over the course of your many displacements.
I felt most displaced when I moved back to Finland at the age of 14. I didn’t want to leave Stockholm and felt completely alien in my home country. Since then I haven’t really felt at home anywhere. Although the two countries are divided only by the Baltic Sea, Finland was — and still is to a certain extent — a very different country to Sweden. The Finnish language is notoriously difficult, and in those days the culture was heavily influenced by Finland’s proximity to Russia (then the Soviet Union). Having lived in the very Western European city of Stockholm for three years, I saw my home country as being part of the Eastern bloc (even though it most certainly wasn’t). The radio played little pop music, and the TV was full of political broadcasts and dark plays about the struggle of the working classes. Western films took longer to arrive, and most people seemed dull and depressing. Nobody smiled and they all dressed in old-fashioned clothes. There seemed to be nothing you could buy in the shops. My sister and I would take the ferry across to Stockholm for many years afterwards — and wow our friends with the H&M clothes we brought back.

Describe the moment when you felt least displaced.
Once I had my children in the UK, I felt I belonged much more — although I took care to make sure they knew they were half-Finnish. To this day, we combine Finnish and English customs: have two Christmases, grow special grass for Easter called rairuoho, and so on… No particular moment stands out in my head where I’ve felt especially at home — yet! That said, the move to London last year has given me an even greater sense of belonging… Perhaps that’s it; perhaps it happened just this year, when we moved to Northwest London?

You may bring one curiosity you’ve collected from each of the countries where you’ve lived into the Displaced Nation. What’s in your suitcase?
From Finland (even though it’s my homeland, it remains somewhat foreign): A Finnish knife (puukko).
From Sweden: A slice of the traditional Swedish cake known as Prinsesstårta.
From England: BBC Radio 4.

You’re invited to prepare one meal based on your travels for other Displaced Nation members. What’s on the menu?
I love food and don’t think I’ve changed my tastes all that much since coming to the UK. Thus my menu for The Displaced Nation is mostly Scandinavian but with one concession to British tastes. (These days, of course, you can get almost any foodstuffs from Finland in London. Bless this multicultural city!)

You may add one word or expression from each of the countries you’ve lived in to The Displaced Nation argot. What words do you loan us?
From Sweden: Fy fan (bloody hell), because it just sounds right for a sense of frustration.
From Finland: Kippis (cheers) — it sounds like “get pissed” to an Englishman’s ears.
From the UK: That’s very interesting… The person who utters these words is usually dying of boredom. (A typical English white lie…)

A statement on your blog’s Home Page strikes us as being very Alice-like: “Rye bread not toast, pickled herring not fish & chips, cinnamon buns not Victoria sponge, ice-hockey not football, wander in a forest not walk in a park, silence not polite conversation.” Does the Alice-in-Wonderland story speak to the life you’ve led in the UK?
In England I’ve always felt as if I were the largest person in the room, particularly against the slight “English roses” — just as Alice did when she entered Wonderland. When I first arrived in this country, I’d often recall the words of the Queen of Hearts to Alice at the trial: “All persons more than a mile high must leave the court.”

QUESTION: Readers — yay or nay for letting Helena Halme into The Displaced Nation? Tell us your reasons. (Note: It’s fine to vote “nay” as long as you couch your reasoning in terms we all — including Helena — find amusing.)

img: Helena Halme’s self-portrait on the number 13 bus. As Halme explained in a blog post last month, the No 13 featured in the British TV series On the Buses, which was broadcast on Finnish TV in the 1970s and was an early influence on her view of men in England. Also please note that Halme’s hair in this picture owes to her own efforts; she hadn’t yet discovered the Brazilian blow dry.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s installment from our displaced fictional heroine, Libby, who is debating whether Woodhaven, Massachusetts, is really the picture-perfect Wonderland it seemed at first sight. (She also meets a realtor who is most decidedly a Red Queen…)

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

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