KINDLE & READING FROM SEEING FOR MYSELF:A Political Traveler's Memoir

Seeing for Myself: A Political Traveler's Memoir is available as a paper back and on KINDLE. Those are great triumphs, as you can see if you read my optimistic posts below, which hint at the travail sometimes trailing along with a self-publisher. 

 I'll be READING FROM SEEING FOR MYSELF, January 12 at 2 p.m at Elliot Bay Book Company. Check out Elliot Bay's calendar, to see what they say about me and my book: www.elliotbaybook.com.

 

On June 23, 2012 I wrote "Yay! Seeing for Myself: A Political Traveler’s Memoir is at the printer’s, and I hope to hold review copies in my hands within a week."

That turned out to be way too optimistic, which I comment on at the end of this description of Seeing for Myself. The rest of this article is still true.

I’ll be writing more about Seeing for myself on this blog, but to get started, here’s what the book is about:

As a child my curiosity about how other people lived was matched by my craving for a world that was fair. As an adult those feelings evolved into social justice activism. When I figured out how to combine travel and politics, I started by participating in the Nairobi U.N. women’s conference, and then exploring the South African struggle against apartheid. I wanted to see other cultures for myself, and then to tell people what I had learned. Thus, this book began.

A few years after the Africa adventure, at age sixty-three, I eagerly told friends about my plan to go to Mexico. But they offered dire warnings: “You’re going to drive from Seattle to the middle of Mexico? Alone? At your age?”  The U.S. State Department was also full of admonitions about danger. But, early on, I had taken seriously the sixties bumper sticker, QUESTION AUTHORITY. So, off I went. Several Mexican winters in an expat community contrasted with a later home-stay in Guatemalan where my hosts offered such a warm welcome, I scarcely noticed the dirt floor or lack of running water and electricity.

The more time I spent in poor countries, the more I viewed travel as a political act. In finding my way around foreign lands alone, it was up to me to figure out the protocols of each culture. Inevitably I made errors, and I write about how I learned to laugh at my gaffes. By the early years of this millennium I was eager to delve deeper into the politics of countries where the U.S. impact on other people was most dramatic, so I joined politically oriented tours to Colombia, and then Iraq and Afghanistan. There was potential danger in those countries, but the tour guides knew the languages and territory, and kept us safe.

In Seeing for Myself I introduce readers to all sorts of people, including men, who are doctors, military and business leaders, as well as refugees and union organizers. My interviews in Afghanistan and at the Kenyan U.N. conference focus especially on women, as do other encounters with Colombian Internally Displaced Persons, South African activists, Iraqi students and others. Since much of my work for the past forty years has centered on women abused by intimate partners, I ask specifically about domestic violence, and hear remarkably similar descriptions of abuse in each country.

On this blog and in Seeing for Myself I invite readers to enjoy virtual trips with me, as I describe travels by bus, car, and occasional hitchhiking. From Soweto to Baghdad, Todos Santos to Kabul, I find lots of laughs, often at my own expense, even as I wrestle with political and ethical dilemmas. It all adds up to a potpourri that I hope readers will delight in sampling for themselves.

Please stay tuned for news of the book, as well as other travel stories I’ll be posting.