book-review
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Go, Girl! The Black Woman’s Book of Travel & Adventure: Compiled by Elaine Lee
Published by The Eighth Mountain Press, 1997, 368 pages Elaine Lee is an African-American woman who has made travel a way of life. Her compilation of 52 pieces of travel writing by African-American women encourages black women to travel by… Continue reading
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The Year of Living Danishly—Uncovering the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country: Helen Russell
Published by Icon Books, 2015, 368 pages Helen Russell lived in London, working crazy hours with hardly any time off. When her partner is offered a job at Lego in Jutland, Denmark, they realize that it is going to be… Continue reading
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Dancing with Cuba—A Memoir of the Revolution: Alma Guillermoprieto
Published by Pantheon, 2004, 290 pages Alma Guillermoprieto is a Mexican journalist who started out wanting to be a dancer. As a young woman, she trained in New York and then spent six months in Cuba in 1970 teaching modern dance. This… Continue reading
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Porcelain Moon and Pomegranates—A Woman’s Trek through Turkey: Üstün Bilgen-Reinart
Published by Dundurm Press, 2007, 240 pages Üstün Bilgen-Reinart is a Turkish woman, who moved to Canada to study when she was 18 and stayed on. But in the late 1990s, she moved back to Turkey to spend more time… Continue reading
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The Summer Book: Tove Jansson
Published by Random House / Sort Of Books, 1975, 160 pages Tove Jansson is a Finnish writer best known for her children’s books about the Moomins. This is one of her few books for adults—a gentle, meditative narrative about the… Continue reading
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Tracks—A Woman’s Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback: Robyn Davidson
Published by Bloomsbury, 1980, 262 pages I’ve often wondered what it would be like to strip myself of all the expectations that society has of me and pit myself against the elements. Who am I really, under all those layers?… Continue reading
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100 Places in the USA Every Woman Should Go: Sophia Dumbling
Published by Traveller’s Tales, 2014, 350 pages Whether you want to go to a retreat amid spectacular natural surroundings, the largest yard sale ever (stretching from Michigan to Alabama!), visit Lizzie Borden’s house (the lass with the axe), or go… Continue reading
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Forward—Letters Written on a Trip Around the World: Lina Boegli
Published by Cornell University Library / Legare Street Press, first published in 1904, 326 pages Alone in Cracow (in what was then Austria) and bored and lonely, Swiss pioneer traveler Lina Boegli decided to see if a woman could work… Continue reading
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The Imported Ghanaian: Alba Kunadu Sumprim
Published by Mavrik, 20o6, 288 pages One way to really know a country is through its people. Alba Kunadu Sumprim’s parents are Ghanaian, but she was born and raised in London. She had decided to move back to Ghana, thinking… Continue reading
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Stranger on a Train—Daydreaming and Smoking around America with Interruptions: Jenny Diski
Published by Virago / Picador, 2002, 288 pages. This account of two railway journeys Jenny Diski took through the US—a short one, from Georgia to Arizona, and a longer one from New York circling the country—is not a conventional travel… Continue reading









