(Download) "Internationalizing Women's Rights: Travel Narratives and Identity Formation." by Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Internationalizing Women's Rights: Travel Narratives and Identity Formation.
- Author : Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table
- Release Date : January 22, 2007
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 263 KB
Description
Introduction In the last ten years, the number of women writing travel narratives has increased dramatically. Contemporary women's popular travel writing produces a modern, hybrid narrative that melds travel writing with the genre of the bildungsroman (or coming of age story) to create a striking narrative of what I am calling the "middle-age narrative." For the purposes of this discussion, I want to look at three best-selling travel memoirs by U.S. women: Alice Steinbach's Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman, published in 2000; Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World by Rita Golden Gelman, published in 2001; and Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, published in 2006. Thus, in middle age, these women are traveling to new physical landscapes but also psychological ones, as they cope with defining their middle years. They seek adventure in order to learn about a new self, not unlike the traditional bildungsroman, yet they write not as adolescents, but as mature women. Judith Butler posits the interesting notion that gender is not only a social construct, but that individuals perform gender, thereby acting out prescriptive gender narratives. I suggest that in middle age, women question and rebel against these conventional gender performances. Why are so many middle-age women writing travel narratives, and what compels the popularity? These traveling authors create narratives that teem with irony, wisdom and humor, offering to their readers a new vista of life at middle age ; the travelers return home renewed and triumphant, and the readers participate in the optimism of the new, modern, middle-aged woman.
 "Internationalizing Women's Rights: Travel Narratives and Identity Formation." by Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free){kind=link}