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Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel
A playful personal and cultural history of travel from a postcolonial, person-of-color perspective, Airplane Mode asks: what does it mean to be a joyous traveler when we live in the ruins of colonialism, capitalism and climate change?
For Shahnaz Habib, an Indian Muslim woman, travel has always been a complicated pleasure. Yet, journeys at home and abroad have profoundly shaped her life. In this inquiring and surprising debut, Habib traces a history of travel from pilgrimages to empires to safaris, taking on colonialist modes of thinking about travel and asking who gets to travel and who gets to write about it.
Threaded through the book are inviting and playful analyses of obvious and not-so-obvious travel artifacts: passports, carousels, bougainvilleas, guidebooks, expressways, the idea of wanderlust. Together, they tell a subversive history of travel as a Euro-American mode of consumerism—but as any traveler knows, travel is more than that. As an immigrant whose loved ones live across continents, Habib takes a deeply curious and joyful look at a troubled and beloved activity.
For Shahnaz Habib, an Indian Muslim woman, travel has always been a complicated pleasure. Yet, journeys at home and abroad have profoundly shaped her life. In this inquiring and surprising debut, Habib traces a history of travel from pilgrimages to empires to safaris, taking on colonialist modes of thinking about travel and asking who gets to travel and who gets to write about it.
Threaded through the book are inviting and playful analyses of obvious and not-so-obvious travel artifacts: passports, carousels, bougainvilleas, guidebooks, expressways, the idea of wanderlust. Together, they tell a subversive history of travel as a Euro-American mode of consumerism—but as any traveler knows, travel is more than that. As an immigrant whose loved ones live across continents, Habib takes a deeply curious and joyful look at a troubled and beloved activity.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published December 5, 2023
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January 15, 2024
Habib starts her fantastic essay collection in Turkey, where people are surprised to hear where she is from:
This chance encounter comes around several times in the book through related questions: are guidebooks to foreign destinations available in your language? are you able to secure a passport or visa to travel where you want to go? Habib, a native Malayalam speaker from Kerala, notes that there is no market for guidebooks in Malayalam, and many other regions of the world, and therefore none are available. She digs into the history of the guidebook as a tool, who uses them, and their European roots.
Habib's essay on passports was among my favorite, giving the history of the document itself and its relatively recent inception, alongside her struggles to secure visas while using her Indian passport.
After India secured its independence from the United Kingdom, for two decades from 1947 to 1967, the newly independent Indian state would provide passports only to those citizens it deemed capable of representing India abroad... based on the prevailing notions of caste and class.
Her own visa application to go to France is delayed so long that she must cancel her non-refundable trip plans. All of this while her American husband did not have to go through any of the same process.
Other topics covered: roadtripping, traveling with elders and small children, ancient and medieval travel and "first to reach" monikers, wanderlust from its Romantic origins to Instagram, Habib's father's armchair travel and reading, nature vs urban travel, ships and trains first for imperialism and then for travel, developing countries [deemed by Habib as "Third World" - and she writes an engaging/convincing afterword about her specific word choice here!] competition for tourists' dollars, women's safety when traveling, and uniquely and interestingly enough a brief history of the carousel and how it is a metaphor for modern travel.
HOORAH to a wonderful SELECTED BIBIOGRAPHY at the end! I wrote down several titles. Really happy that was included.
So, an "irreverent" history of travel as the book's subtitle notes? Not quite - a strange editorial decision for the subtitle. But a personal, extremely interesting and well-researched book on travel and travel-related marginalia? Most definitely. Really enjoyed this one!
Related reading (and books I've loved and reviewed!):
On a Truck Alone, to McMahon by Nabaneeta Dev Sen, translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha
Travelling While Black: Essays Inspired by a Life on the Move by Nanjala Nyabola
"Where are you from?" Mehmet asked me the first time we met.
"Hindistan," I said, using the Turkish word for India.
"But you don't live there?"
"How do you know?"
"Because you are traveling. Only Americans, British, Australians, and Japanese travel."
...He was not mocking me. Brown people like him and me did not fit the stereotype of tourist.
This chance encounter comes around several times in the book through related questions: are guidebooks to foreign destinations available in your language? are you able to secure a passport or visa to travel where you want to go? Habib, a native Malayalam speaker from Kerala, notes that there is no market for guidebooks in Malayalam, and many other regions of the world, and therefore none are available. She digs into the history of the guidebook as a tool, who uses them, and their European roots.
Habib's essay on passports was among my favorite, giving the history of the document itself and its relatively recent inception, alongside her struggles to secure visas while using her Indian passport.
After India secured its independence from the United Kingdom, for two decades from 1947 to 1967, the newly independent Indian state would provide passports only to those citizens it deemed capable of representing India abroad... based on the prevailing notions of caste and class.
Her own visa application to go to France is delayed so long that she must cancel her non-refundable trip plans. All of this while her American husband did not have to go through any of the same process.
Other topics covered: roadtripping, traveling with elders and small children, ancient and medieval travel and "first to reach" monikers, wanderlust from its Romantic origins to Instagram, Habib's father's armchair travel and reading, nature vs urban travel, ships and trains first for imperialism and then for travel, developing countries [deemed by Habib as "Third World" - and she writes an engaging/convincing afterword about her specific word choice here!] competition for tourists' dollars, women's safety when traveling, and uniquely and interestingly enough a brief history of the carousel and how it is a metaphor for modern travel.
HOORAH to a wonderful SELECTED BIBIOGRAPHY at the end! I wrote down several titles. Really happy that was included.
So, an "irreverent" history of travel as the book's subtitle notes? Not quite - a strange editorial decision for the subtitle. But a personal, extremely interesting and well-researched book on travel and travel-related marginalia? Most definitely. Really enjoyed this one!
Related reading (and books I've loved and reviewed!):
On a Truck Alone, to McMahon by Nabaneeta Dev Sen, translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha
Travelling While Black: Essays Inspired by a Life on the Move by Nanjala Nyabola
![Profile Image for laurel [the suspected bibliophile].](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1645808644i/7494844._UX200_CR0,6,200,200_.jpg)
February 4, 2024
I want to be curious and intrepid; instead, I am confused and lonely.
Shahnaz Habib muses on travel and its impacts on the world and on each other, and what travel means for a woman of color with a Third World (her phrase, not mine) passport.
Ugh this book! So, so good. I first encountered Habib while listening to "Can you travel the world—ethically?" on Code Switch where she guest starred. She was so fucking amazing that I had to read her book, and I knew I was not going to be disappointed from the very first sentence.
Airplane Mode has a little of everything, and a little deep dive and sideway tumbles into a little of everything (passports, flaneuring, imperialism, natural history, carnival carousels, expressways and racism, consumption, ecosystems and climate crisis, cotton, sugar, bus ride meditation, comedy routines, etc.), with sharp commentary and gorgeous writing.
There's also the insight that while travel is fantastic, so much of white people travel is devoted to seeing things instead of people, of viewing the locals as set dressing, of turning their ventures into something that defines themselves and betters themselves as people because of where they have been and what they have seen (instead of say, who they have interacted with), and that the language of travel is often couched in terms of conquest and self-centering. Of labeling yourself as "traveler" instead of "tourist," elevating yourself above the masses.
And there are also stories of the people she meets on her own travels to places. Her own experiences and her own frustrations with the entire process of traveling that are so often wiped away in favor the glamour and spectacle.
Travel has been sold to us as the ultimate horizon-expanding, mind-broadening, self-improvement experience.
Anywho. I've known a couple of people who have made traveling as their default personality, and they are exhausting (mainly because of the really insulting point of view that not traveling is inherently lesser and worldly). This book was a lovely antidote to that mindset.
I highlighted so many passages and added so much nonfiction to my tbr that it isn't even funny anymore.
Some highlights that really stood out to me:
How intrepid you are as a traveler depends, at least on partially, on how entitled you feel to tralve. On whether there's an army base nearby with soldiers from your country. On whether guidebooks are written to ease your path through the world.
But reading is not simply a fat-free, gluten-free version of travel. Reading the world is, for the provincial, an act of self-preservation.
A woman's right to loiter is a crucial building block for an equitable city.
Through its supposedly neutral pursuit of scientific knowledge, natural history managed to reinforce the authority of European surveillance and appropriation of resources.
In other words, discovery equaled converting local knowledge into European discourse.
There are parallels here to the way the Industrial Revolution in England made tourism necessary and possible. But did that generation of tourists live with a quietly ticking clock counting the days down to the final glacier? The way we seek out nature now is tinged with mourning and alarm, and every time I looked out at the thick forests that covered the mountains in Wayanad, I felt the sad dilemma of being human in the twenty-first century.
From Uluru to the Grand Canyond to Muthanga, the tourist walks freely through lands that Indigenous people have been evicted from. This is the superpower of tourism: it can masquerade as a public good while legitimizing land-grabbing.
So can a person travel ethically?
In short, it's very, very complicated. In short, no.
Shahnaz Habib muses on travel and its impacts on the world and on each other, and what travel means for a woman of color with a Third World (her phrase, not mine) passport.
Ugh this book! So, so good. I first encountered Habib while listening to "Can you travel the world—ethically?" on Code Switch where she guest starred. She was so fucking amazing that I had to read her book, and I knew I was not going to be disappointed from the very first sentence.
Airplane Mode has a little of everything, and a little deep dive and sideway tumbles into a little of everything (passports, flaneuring, imperialism, natural history, carnival carousels, expressways and racism, consumption, ecosystems and climate crisis, cotton, sugar, bus ride meditation, comedy routines, etc.), with sharp commentary and gorgeous writing.
There's also the insight that while travel is fantastic, so much of white people travel is devoted to seeing things instead of people, of viewing the locals as set dressing, of turning their ventures into something that defines themselves and betters themselves as people because of where they have been and what they have seen (instead of say, who they have interacted with), and that the language of travel is often couched in terms of conquest and self-centering. Of labeling yourself as "traveler" instead of "tourist," elevating yourself above the masses.
And there are also stories of the people she meets on her own travels to places. Her own experiences and her own frustrations with the entire process of traveling that are so often wiped away in favor the glamour and spectacle.
Travel has been sold to us as the ultimate horizon-expanding, mind-broadening, self-improvement experience.
Anywho. I've known a couple of people who have made traveling as their default personality, and they are exhausting (mainly because of the really insulting point of view that not traveling is inherently lesser and worldly). This book was a lovely antidote to that mindset.
I highlighted so many passages and added so much nonfiction to my tbr that it isn't even funny anymore.
Some highlights that really stood out to me:
How intrepid you are as a traveler depends, at least on partially, on how entitled you feel to tralve. On whether there's an army base nearby with soldiers from your country. On whether guidebooks are written to ease your path through the world.
But reading is not simply a fat-free, gluten-free version of travel. Reading the world is, for the provincial, an act of self-preservation.
A woman's right to loiter is a crucial building block for an equitable city.
Through its supposedly neutral pursuit of scientific knowledge, natural history managed to reinforce the authority of European surveillance and appropriation of resources.
In other words, discovery equaled converting local knowledge into European discourse.
There are parallels here to the way the Industrial Revolution in England made tourism necessary and possible. But did that generation of tourists live with a quietly ticking clock counting the days down to the final glacier? The way we seek out nature now is tinged with mourning and alarm, and every time I looked out at the thick forests that covered the mountains in Wayanad, I felt the sad dilemma of being human in the twenty-first century.
From Uluru to the Grand Canyond to Muthanga, the tourist walks freely through lands that Indigenous people have been evicted from. This is the superpower of tourism: it can masquerade as a public good while legitimizing land-grabbing.
So can a person travel ethically?
In short, it's very, very complicated. In short, no.
September 7, 2023
A thought provoking read about the origins of travel and how it intersects with class, race and colonialism. Loved the term, pseudiscovery, and how it centers the white experience in "foreign" lands. Both personal and informative, Habib interweaves her life experience with her own migration and travel, with things that aren't often thought about: how travel became a thing, the origins of passports, and how discovery is in the eyes of the beholder. While this it subtitled as irreverent, it's anything but.
I received an arc from the publisher but all opinions are my own.
I received an arc from the publisher but all opinions are my own.
August 16, 2023
Post-pandemic, many people have been eager to travel and to indulge in wanderlust, with advertising and media feeding that desire to see other places. But as Habib points out in this thoughtful and often pointed history of travel, the conditions of your travel plans will vary based on the color of your passport and the color of your skin (and possibly your gender). As a woman of color with family scattered around the world, Habib knows all too well the hurdles that people with Third World passports (yes, she uses the term Third World and explains why) must go through in order to travel from one country to another, and she also knows that visiting a new place more likely calls for caution rather than adventure.
Habib's research into the history of travel reveals how much the modern tourism industry is based on European and American consumerism, dating back to the era of colonialism and the age of "discovery" (which she refers to as "pseudiscovery"). She also unravels the connections between military presence and tourist development, as seen in the South Pacific following World War II. Throughout the book, she points out how privilege (in whatever way) influences how entitled a person may feel to travel and explore different areas of the world -- but also how that same privilege can block someone from true awareness of the political, social, and cultural life of the places they visit. Habib uses examples from her own travels as a Brown Muslim woman originally from India to shore up her points, and she makes a convincing argument that travel as we now know it still often falls into the old patterns and viewpoints of "discovering" and valuing the world through a Western lens.
Reading this book gave me many opportunities to reconsider not only the history I was taught in school but also my own experiences with traveling and how I feel about travel now. If travel should help us expand our horizons and learn more about the world outside of our own comfort zones, then this book is an essential read for anyone who welcomes the perspective of someone whose experiences are different from our own. 5 stars.
Thank you, Catapult and NetGalley, for providing an eARC of this book. Opinions expressed here are solely my own.
Habib's research into the history of travel reveals how much the modern tourism industry is based on European and American consumerism, dating back to the era of colonialism and the age of "discovery" (which she refers to as "pseudiscovery"). She also unravels the connections between military presence and tourist development, as seen in the South Pacific following World War II. Throughout the book, she points out how privilege (in whatever way) influences how entitled a person may feel to travel and explore different areas of the world -- but also how that same privilege can block someone from true awareness of the political, social, and cultural life of the places they visit. Habib uses examples from her own travels as a Brown Muslim woman originally from India to shore up her points, and she makes a convincing argument that travel as we now know it still often falls into the old patterns and viewpoints of "discovering" and valuing the world through a Western lens.
Reading this book gave me many opportunities to reconsider not only the history I was taught in school but also my own experiences with traveling and how I feel about travel now. If travel should help us expand our horizons and learn more about the world outside of our own comfort zones, then this book is an essential read for anyone who welcomes the perspective of someone whose experiences are different from our own. 5 stars.
Thank you, Catapult and NetGalley, for providing an eARC of this book. Opinions expressed here are solely my own.
December 29, 2023
Airplane Mode isn’t really a history of travel, irreverent or otherwise. It’s more of a meditation on the intersection of culture and travel. It’s a pleasant read.
January 6, 2024
I’m giving it 2 stars bc tbh I did not finish it. I liked the personal stories that were woven in, but there was so much history that was not super interesting to me. I think I just was expecting the book to be different based on the title. The beginning did make me think differently about the way that we often view traveling and the ease at which Americans are able to travel vs people from other countries.
November 10, 2023
3.75 stars
This quirky hard to classify book was quite readable and thought-provoking. It definitely spends a lot of time pointing out the racial and class limitations of travel: who can go where, why, the history of tourism, the ethics of tourism etc. And there is some personal history by the author who is from India that fleshes out the various statements. She illustrates with yet another calm listing of situations that white American travelers (U.S. passport holders) rarely think about -- having to have a visa for visiting another country, what documents to provide and so on.
There is a lot to think about here but Habib just lays it out there and doesn't bludgeon anyone with it. I appreciated her thoughtful approach and interesting historical tidbits and I also enjoyed the personal stories that she threw in which often detoured a bit from the main point but always circled back around. An expansive read that it will take a while to process. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
This quirky hard to classify book was quite readable and thought-provoking. It definitely spends a lot of time pointing out the racial and class limitations of travel: who can go where, why, the history of tourism, the ethics of tourism etc. And there is some personal history by the author who is from India that fleshes out the various statements. She illustrates with yet another calm listing of situations that white American travelers (U.S. passport holders) rarely think about -- having to have a visa for visiting another country, what documents to provide and so on.
There is a lot to think about here but Habib just lays it out there and doesn't bludgeon anyone with it. I appreciated her thoughtful approach and interesting historical tidbits and I also enjoyed the personal stories that she threw in which often detoured a bit from the main point but always circled back around. An expansive read that it will take a while to process. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
August 16, 2023
Post-pandemic, many people have been eager to travel and to indulge in wanderlust, with advertising and media feeding that desire to see other places. But as Habib points out in this thoughtful and often pointed history of travel, the conditions of your travel plans will vary based on the color of your passport and the color of your skin (and possibly your gender). As a woman of color with family scattered around the world, Habib knows all too well the hurdles that people with Third World passports (yes, she uses the term Third World and explains why) must go through in order to travel from one country to another, and she also knows that visiting a new place more likely calls for caution rather than adventure.
Habib's research into the history of travel reveals how much the modern tourism industry is based on European and American consumerism, dating back to the era of colonialism and the age of "discovery" (which she refers to as "pseudiscovery"). She also unravels the connections between military presence and tourist development, as seen in the South Pacific following World War II. Throughout the book, she points out how privilege (in whatever way) influences how entitled a person may feel to travel and explore different areas of the world -- but also how that same privilege can block someone from true awareness of the political, social, and cultural life of the places they visit. Habib uses examples from her own travels as a Brown Muslim woman originally from India to shore up her points, and she makes a convincing argument that travel as we now know it still often falls into the old patterns and viewpoints of "discovering" and valuing the world through a Western lens.
Reading this book gave me many opportunities to reconsider not only the history I was taught in school but also my own experiences with traveling and how I feel about travel now. If travel should help us expand our horizons and learn more about the world outside of our own comfort zones, then this book is an essential read for anyone who welcomes the perspective of someone whose experiences are different from our own. 5 stars.
Thank you, Catapult and NetGalley, for providing an eARC of this book. Opinions expressed here are solely my own.
Habib's research into the history of travel reveals how much the modern tourism industry is based on European and American consumerism, dating back to the era of colonialism and the age of "discovery" (which she refers to as "pseudiscovery"). She also unravels the connections between military presence and tourist development, as seen in the South Pacific following World War II. Throughout the book, she points out how privilege (in whatever way) influences how entitled a person may feel to travel and explore different areas of the world -- but also how that same privilege can block someone from true awareness of the political, social, and cultural life of the places they visit. Habib uses examples from her own travels as a Brown Muslim woman originally from India to shore up her points, and she makes a convincing argument that travel as we now know it still often falls into the old patterns and viewpoints of "discovering" and valuing the world through a Western lens.
Reading this book gave me many opportunities to reconsider not only the history I was taught in school but also my own experiences with traveling and how I feel about travel now. If travel should help us expand our horizons and learn more about the world outside of our own comfort zones, then this book is an essential read for anyone who welcomes the perspective of someone whose experiences are different from our own. 5 stars.
Thank you, Catapult and NetGalley, for providing an eARC of this book. Opinions expressed here are solely my own.
January 13, 2024
Its harder than it seems to find a really good book on travel.
An important distinction there. Not a travel book,, but a book on travel. Every once in a while I come across a gem though, and this is the newest addition to that ever growing collection on my shelf.
The irreverent part of the book's title (or subtitle) comes from the author's uncensored approach. She is not afraid to pull the illusioned covers stralight off our wanderlust in order to bring us face to face with the reality of travel as it is, for what is, examing how these realities shape our experiences as travelers. There is an element of this that is meant to shake up our ignorance, which is perhaps more willful than we like to admit. But what makes Habib so accessible is that she also admits and embraces her own willful ignorance. She knows these realities, many of them first hand, and she also knows that the lust for travel, or to travel as a "tourist", has a hold on her. This is a tension more than it is a wrong, and something she has learned to be okay with, and even come to appreciate over the years.
This is her writing debut, and her debut as a travel wrtier, and she manages to write in a way that captures her unique vantage point while expressing and exploring universal ideas and experiences. Part of this uniqueness is her experiences with travel as an immigrant, as a black woman (from India), and equally as a western American living in Brooklyn. So when she writes of what it is to travel with a passport from a Third World Country, she speaks from a particular knowledge of these obstacles. This is an experience that I did not know and understand before, and Habib does a wonderful job of helping to show the limitations that Third World passports can have, the challenges of having to navigate visas, and the many stereotypes and perceptions that have to be faced and sidestepped along the way. And this is just as true for someone living and residing in Brooklyn as an American citizen. This is all wrapped up as well in a fascinating, and quite concise and pointed, history of the passport.
Much of what Habib writes here follows the shape of the world's global history. The history of travel is the history of colonialism. It is shaped by a Western view of what is percieved to be the unconquered world
"While such extreme prejudices have mostly been weeded out of guidebooks, the Baconian understanding of the world as a subject to be observed by an objective European male observer for the benefit of other Eurooran males has continued well past the nineteenth century. Even today, guidebooks tend to assume a young Western backpacker as their Platonic-ideal reader."
One of the more fascinating insights she provides is the way a percieved homogenous culture in the West, built as it is by immigration, travels in order to experience culture. We deem culture to be those things that do not adhere to our own, normalized (by which we typically mean developed) way of life, and thus when we encounter what are deemed to be "less civilized" environments, we feel like we are experiencing the world. It is the thing that feeds wanderlust. At the same time, travel is built on forced global relationships between western power and third world opportunity. Tourism is designed to import western culture into foreign territory, but in a way that effectively hides it within "the cultured experiences" that we, as tourists, seek, however real or illusioned they might be. The reasons this is so successful reaches back to the problematic nature of conquest of course, but in a post-enlightenment world, conquest takes on different language and different forms. It is, in a way, a much more cooperative effort, even if this cooperation is largely a forced byproduct of the modern world. As she writes,
"Western dominance has increasingly reduced the Western imperium to a provincial, monocultural existence. World domination comes at a price. This is the paradox by which European and North American cultures are increasingly losing their cosmopolitanism, because their definition of cosmopolitanism hinges on the universality of their own culture, from its version of coffee to its brand of human rights. On the other hand, the quiet, calculating cosmopolitanism of the non-Western provincial takes care to disguise itself as non-cosmopolitsnism, to camouflage itself like an Amazonian butterfly. It takes on more layers of subversiveness the farther it moves away from the center."
I loved the anecdottal stories she provides regarding her family as well, especially the ones with her father. There is something quintessential and necessary to the way she compares her experiences as a tourist with her dad's experience of being a tourist in his own backyard. She allows these insights to shape the way she travels abroad, suggesting that she no longer feels like she needs to do the things one is supposed to do to be considered a traveller, instead treating her travels abroad as an opportunity to experience the world the same way she would back home. It is not necessary to see the Eiffel Tower in order to see Paris, although she fully admits to giving into this lustful need as well. She can experience Paris by having a picnic in a park with food from an authentic Indian restaurant (part of the reality of the colonized world).
There are so many tidbits and interesting sideroads here (such as her reflections on Around The World in 80 Days, for example, or the way France saved its own culture through a calculated move to build a tourism ecosytstem, or travel's association with war and the ensuing history of the carousel), and Habib writes in such a way as to make her seem like someone you would want to sit down and have a coffee with. But it does have a clear, overarching vision that seeks to reimagine the notion of the "Third World". She dismantles the illusion that history as a singular trajectory, from less developed to the developed world, looking at the way in which we "divide our stories into eras", imagining that "we have come so far from our ancestors", by which we typically mean a better world, whatever we mean by better. She speaks of a "multi-temporal" world, one that is constantly changing, here today, gone tomorrow, circumventing and stripping away our self created and self imposed notions of progress. We exist in a world that is as transient as it is fixed, and as travelers we experience it in the shape that history brings it to us, the same world from as yesterday seen from todays perspective. The questions we ask of this world then, are the same questions we ask of ourselves. However much our wanderlust exists to make us feel like we are seeing beyond ourselves, it remains a phenomenon fueled by the need to esscape this sense that we are in fact stuck in time without any sense of movement. Travel creates these movements for us. Which is precisely why its so easy to miss that we exist as part of a broader movement, be it in a circle rather than a straight line. Its in these broader movements that, even as we enjoy the wanderlust and the tourism, we can, at the same time, recognize the realitie of our world's (and indeed our own) problems and potentials.
If I was to sit down for coffee with Habib, I imagine I probably would challenge some of her perecpetions on religious experience, and certainly her observations about our relationship to nature (she has an uneven chapter that explores the history of travel in nature, our relationship to the mountains, and to climate change). But I would do so wanting to probe her mind on her knowledge of travel and of us as traveleres, and how that fits into the spectrum of our lives as physical, social and spiritual travelers. As it is, this book will suffice as a great conversation partner to that end.
An important distinction there. Not a travel book,, but a book on travel. Every once in a while I come across a gem though, and this is the newest addition to that ever growing collection on my shelf.
The irreverent part of the book's title (or subtitle) comes from the author's uncensored approach. She is not afraid to pull the illusioned covers stralight off our wanderlust in order to bring us face to face with the reality of travel as it is, for what is, examing how these realities shape our experiences as travelers. There is an element of this that is meant to shake up our ignorance, which is perhaps more willful than we like to admit. But what makes Habib so accessible is that she also admits and embraces her own willful ignorance. She knows these realities, many of them first hand, and she also knows that the lust for travel, or to travel as a "tourist", has a hold on her. This is a tension more than it is a wrong, and something she has learned to be okay with, and even come to appreciate over the years.
This is her writing debut, and her debut as a travel wrtier, and she manages to write in a way that captures her unique vantage point while expressing and exploring universal ideas and experiences. Part of this uniqueness is her experiences with travel as an immigrant, as a black woman (from India), and equally as a western American living in Brooklyn. So when she writes of what it is to travel with a passport from a Third World Country, she speaks from a particular knowledge of these obstacles. This is an experience that I did not know and understand before, and Habib does a wonderful job of helping to show the limitations that Third World passports can have, the challenges of having to navigate visas, and the many stereotypes and perceptions that have to be faced and sidestepped along the way. And this is just as true for someone living and residing in Brooklyn as an American citizen. This is all wrapped up as well in a fascinating, and quite concise and pointed, history of the passport.
Much of what Habib writes here follows the shape of the world's global history. The history of travel is the history of colonialism. It is shaped by a Western view of what is percieved to be the unconquered world
"While such extreme prejudices have mostly been weeded out of guidebooks, the Baconian understanding of the world as a subject to be observed by an objective European male observer for the benefit of other Eurooran males has continued well past the nineteenth century. Even today, guidebooks tend to assume a young Western backpacker as their Platonic-ideal reader."
One of the more fascinating insights she provides is the way a percieved homogenous culture in the West, built as it is by immigration, travels in order to experience culture. We deem culture to be those things that do not adhere to our own, normalized (by which we typically mean developed) way of life, and thus when we encounter what are deemed to be "less civilized" environments, we feel like we are experiencing the world. It is the thing that feeds wanderlust. At the same time, travel is built on forced global relationships between western power and third world opportunity. Tourism is designed to import western culture into foreign territory, but in a way that effectively hides it within "the cultured experiences" that we, as tourists, seek, however real or illusioned they might be. The reasons this is so successful reaches back to the problematic nature of conquest of course, but in a post-enlightenment world, conquest takes on different language and different forms. It is, in a way, a much more cooperative effort, even if this cooperation is largely a forced byproduct of the modern world. As she writes,
"Western dominance has increasingly reduced the Western imperium to a provincial, monocultural existence. World domination comes at a price. This is the paradox by which European and North American cultures are increasingly losing their cosmopolitanism, because their definition of cosmopolitanism hinges on the universality of their own culture, from its version of coffee to its brand of human rights. On the other hand, the quiet, calculating cosmopolitanism of the non-Western provincial takes care to disguise itself as non-cosmopolitsnism, to camouflage itself like an Amazonian butterfly. It takes on more layers of subversiveness the farther it moves away from the center."
I loved the anecdottal stories she provides regarding her family as well, especially the ones with her father. There is something quintessential and necessary to the way she compares her experiences as a tourist with her dad's experience of being a tourist in his own backyard. She allows these insights to shape the way she travels abroad, suggesting that she no longer feels like she needs to do the things one is supposed to do to be considered a traveller, instead treating her travels abroad as an opportunity to experience the world the same way she would back home. It is not necessary to see the Eiffel Tower in order to see Paris, although she fully admits to giving into this lustful need as well. She can experience Paris by having a picnic in a park with food from an authentic Indian restaurant (part of the reality of the colonized world).
There are so many tidbits and interesting sideroads here (such as her reflections on Around The World in 80 Days, for example, or the way France saved its own culture through a calculated move to build a tourism ecosytstem, or travel's association with war and the ensuing history of the carousel), and Habib writes in such a way as to make her seem like someone you would want to sit down and have a coffee with. But it does have a clear, overarching vision that seeks to reimagine the notion of the "Third World". She dismantles the illusion that history as a singular trajectory, from less developed to the developed world, looking at the way in which we "divide our stories into eras", imagining that "we have come so far from our ancestors", by which we typically mean a better world, whatever we mean by better. She speaks of a "multi-temporal" world, one that is constantly changing, here today, gone tomorrow, circumventing and stripping away our self created and self imposed notions of progress. We exist in a world that is as transient as it is fixed, and as travelers we experience it in the shape that history brings it to us, the same world from as yesterday seen from todays perspective. The questions we ask of this world then, are the same questions we ask of ourselves. However much our wanderlust exists to make us feel like we are seeing beyond ourselves, it remains a phenomenon fueled by the need to esscape this sense that we are in fact stuck in time without any sense of movement. Travel creates these movements for us. Which is precisely why its so easy to miss that we exist as part of a broader movement, be it in a circle rather than a straight line. Its in these broader movements that, even as we enjoy the wanderlust and the tourism, we can, at the same time, recognize the realitie of our world's (and indeed our own) problems and potentials.
If I was to sit down for coffee with Habib, I imagine I probably would challenge some of her perecpetions on religious experience, and certainly her observations about our relationship to nature (she has an uneven chapter that explores the history of travel in nature, our relationship to the mountains, and to climate change). But I would do so wanting to probe her mind on her knowledge of travel and of us as traveleres, and how that fits into the spectrum of our lives as physical, social and spiritual travelers. As it is, this book will suffice as a great conversation partner to that end.
March 24, 2024
In full disclosure, I'm a bit biased in that the author is a friend of a family member and, while I don't know her super well, I do go into this reading already thinking of her as a brilliant, wry, witty person and so was hearing this book with her voice in mind.
Part memoir, part history of travel especially for minorities, part musings, part something over my head but that I may get more out of when I reread this book someday...this book's existence calms that part of my soul that has been so angry at some other "history of travel books" I have read where the assumption has been that the experience of the white man is the experience of all readers and, by virtue of the silence, seeming to say it is the only point of view worth considering.
I especially loved this part in pointing out how Eurocentric the history we are taught is: "Why is it an achievement to be the first European to reach China? Who is that achievement for? We rarely hear about the first Asian to reach Europe or the first African to reach the Americas. But the first European to reach China and the first European to reach India by sea and the first European to reach the Americas? Their names are household names, not because this is a major achievement, but because of the European investment in the idea of the first European to reach these "other" places."
I really appreciated how she wrote about concepts like the idea of psuedo-discovery, the entitlement of who gets to be an "expat" versus an immigrant, having to consider differences around safety and the way this is often ignored in writing by men, historical attempts to control physical bodies of the "wrong" type of people, the body of travel writing and explorers that are taught about and those that don't make the pages, the way climate change is affecting travel, etc. The discussion of who experiences restrictions or not makes me sad at how common it was in my life that members of the extended family who lived in other countries would not be getting visitor visas approved to come to the US for a child's wedding, a funeral, or to meet grandbabies.
Shahnaz can be scathing at times in calling out white entitlement (and I'm wondering how this will be discussed in my upcoming book club meeting) but I feel like she turns that critical lens to herself as well and all of us as we think about how we move through the world.
Definitely recommend and definitely will be revisiting parts of this book again and again.
Part memoir, part history of travel especially for minorities, part musings, part something over my head but that I may get more out of when I reread this book someday...this book's existence calms that part of my soul that has been so angry at some other "history of travel books" I have read where the assumption has been that the experience of the white man is the experience of all readers and, by virtue of the silence, seeming to say it is the only point of view worth considering.
I especially loved this part in pointing out how Eurocentric the history we are taught is: "Why is it an achievement to be the first European to reach China? Who is that achievement for? We rarely hear about the first Asian to reach Europe or the first African to reach the Americas. But the first European to reach China and the first European to reach India by sea and the first European to reach the Americas? Their names are household names, not because this is a major achievement, but because of the European investment in the idea of the first European to reach these "other" places."
I really appreciated how she wrote about concepts like the idea of psuedo-discovery, the entitlement of who gets to be an "expat" versus an immigrant, having to consider differences around safety and the way this is often ignored in writing by men, historical attempts to control physical bodies of the "wrong" type of people, the body of travel writing and explorers that are taught about and those that don't make the pages, the way climate change is affecting travel, etc. The discussion of who experiences restrictions or not makes me sad at how common it was in my life that members of the extended family who lived in other countries would not be getting visitor visas approved to come to the US for a child's wedding, a funeral, or to meet grandbabies.
Shahnaz can be scathing at times in calling out white entitlement (and I'm wondering how this will be discussed in my upcoming book club meeting) but I feel like she turns that critical lens to herself as well and all of us as we think about how we move through the world.
Definitely recommend and definitely will be revisiting parts of this book again and again.
February 2, 2024
I am a big traveler and take that fortune and responsibility very seriously; I was disappointed in this book. It's less focused on travel, and more so on historical dynamics (admittedly problematic) that have brought travel to where it is today...
...but, inconsistently --and conveniently ignorant of moments of the author's own privilege and with use of broad generalizations that reinforce her already-established opinion; as an example: she laments the replacement of local populations as a result of globalization... from a converted indigenous-to-farm-to-tourism chalet. She condemns ridiculing busloads of Chinese tourists (agree), but just pages later ridicules American tourists ordering Thai food in Barcelona --failing to recognize this embedded community of immigrants (and, FWIW, if you haven't sampled seemingly-familiar immigrant food through the lens of a foreign country, I highly recommend it). I think what sat least well with me was her repeated practice of assuming and presenting intent, not just with people but including one moment after seeing wild elephants when she assuredly stated that any "domesticated" version merely slogs through life.
I fundamentally agree that classism, sexism, racism, homophobia, et. al. are certainly problems that are systemically embedded within the act of travel, and actively work to identify and counter these, but this book description mis-represented it's content. A few fun anecdotes, but not enough to counteract the overall sentiment.
...but, inconsistently --and conveniently ignorant of moments of the author's own privilege and with use of broad generalizations that reinforce her already-established opinion; as an example: she laments the replacement of local populations as a result of globalization... from a converted indigenous-to-farm-to-tourism chalet. She condemns ridiculing busloads of Chinese tourists (agree), but just pages later ridicules American tourists ordering Thai food in Barcelona --failing to recognize this embedded community of immigrants (and, FWIW, if you haven't sampled seemingly-familiar immigrant food through the lens of a foreign country, I highly recommend it). I think what sat least well with me was her repeated practice of assuming and presenting intent, not just with people but including one moment after seeing wild elephants when she assuredly stated that any "domesticated" version merely slogs through life.
I fundamentally agree that classism, sexism, racism, homophobia, et. al. are certainly problems that are systemically embedded within the act of travel, and actively work to identify and counter these, but this book description mis-represented it's content. A few fun anecdotes, but not enough to counteract the overall sentiment.
March 2, 2024
This book offers a stunningly beautiful, humor-filled, educational, and eye-opening exploration of the history and personal experiences of travel. It captivated me so thoroughly that I found myself devouring its contents in just a day. The journey through its pages has not only enlightened me but also transformed me into a more informed global citizen. I cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone looking to broaden their horizons and deepen their understanding of the world.
April 12, 2024
Ambitions in scope, Habib succeeds in weaving together thousands of years of history and storytelling with extensive research, providing new insights into a fundamental human experience.
Couldn't put it down!
Couldn't put it down!
January 2, 2024
Really thought provoking and beautifully written.
April 14, 2024
As someone who loves to travel this book was a really important window into the history of tourism, the privilege of being someone who can travel to basically anywhere I want, and the impact it has on those who “host” you in their home city and country. It was full of interesting facts and history but read like a story.
February 15, 2024
An interesting discussion of links between travel and passports and colonialism.
March 10, 2024
As a white male from the US and a travel agent this book made me think about what is travel and its impacts.
“Reading is a passport to the world. For those whose passports carry the stigma of Third World citizenship, reading is often the more accessible passport.”
“Reading is a passport to the world. For those whose passports carry the stigma of Third World citizenship, reading is often the more accessible passport.”
January 17, 2024
The book deals with the history of travel. It is well written. Some parts were interesting for me, some less interesting.
January 31, 2024
I really enjoyed this book of essays on the experiences of traveling as a woman of color on a 'Third World' passport.
It was so great to read about travel that's not centered on a white colonialist point of view. But it was so much more than that- it was a memoir and a historical and literary analysis, ad somehow Habib was able to make that mix seem effortless and engaging.
I will say that I had to push through the first part which was a bit dry- but I'm glad I did because this is a gem of a book.
This would be a good companion to The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives by Naoíse Mac Sweeney which skewered the racist ideologies that are at the foundation of the vaunted 'West' versus the rest of the world.
Thank you to Netgalley and Catapult for providing me with a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.
It was so great to read about travel that's not centered on a white colonialist point of view. But it was so much more than that- it was a memoir and a historical and literary analysis, ad somehow Habib was able to make that mix seem effortless and engaging.
I will say that I had to push through the first part which was a bit dry- but I'm glad I did because this is a gem of a book.
This would be a good companion to The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives by Naoíse Mac Sweeney which skewered the racist ideologies that are at the foundation of the vaunted 'West' versus the rest of the world.
Thank you to Netgalley and Catapult for providing me with a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.
December 17, 2023
As soon as the most intense months of the COVID-19 pandemic started to wane, many of my friends and family’s first thoughts turned to travel, eager to book the cruises and treks that had been only the stuff of imagination for so long. Some stoked their imaginary journeys by reading travel guidebooks or essays. But, as Shahnaz Habib’s excellent new book points out, these resources only provide part of the story.
Habib, who grew up in Kerala, India, but now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and child, is primarily a translator. Perhaps that outlook --- along with her own identity as a relatively recent immigrant --- enables her to view the history of travel, and the ways we write, talk about and record our travel, through a different lens. In a series of wide-ranging chapters that also can be read largely as stand-alone essays, Habib explores the current state of travel for those who come from the so-called Third World (a label she herself uses) and the complicated history of travel, particularly as it relates to capitalism and European colonialism.
Tourism, Habib argues, was sparked by the Industrial Revolution in several key ways. New money and a growing middle class opened up the possibility of international travel to more Europeans and Americans, who also benefited from a rapidly growing transportation infrastructure abroad. It was designed, as Habib traces, to facilitate the plundering of resources (and, in some cases, people) from those countries, in turn enriching the white colonialists who subsequently used their growing disposable income to tour so-called exotic locales. Habib spends one particularly insightful chapter discussing Phileas Fogg, the protagonist of Jules Vernes’ AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS. Fogg’s daring feat was made possible, she argues, not by his fearless or adventurous spirit, but by the decades of colonial expansion that paved the way for him and whose evidence is right there in the book --- if you look for it.
The ways in which largely white, male travel writers from Europe and the United States chronicle their experience of travel to distant places is also telling. Habib identifies a tradition of “pseudiscovery,” the notion that various landmarks both natural and human-made were unknown or “lost” until being encountered by a white traveler (one example is Angkor Wat), as well as how most conventional travel narratives speak of interactions with nature in terms of battle: “conquering a mountain,” etc. The local people whose daily lives make these kinds of “conquests” possible are largely invisible in such narratives; here she centers them.
Habib’s exploration is not only historical in nature. She also writes about her own experience of “passportism,” recounting a time when her American-born husband wanted to take a spontaneous European vacation before she had gained US citizenship. He was unprepared by the various visas and other bureaucratic hoops that were required for her to make the identical trip that he, with his American credentials, could book with ease.
In one of the more personal chapters, Habib writes about traveling through Brooklyn by bus, in the early months of her daughter’s life, and how looking at her adopted city through a bus window and interacting with fellow passengers changed her outlook on both this place and her new identity as a mother. If your holiday plans include travel, AIRPLANE MODE is the perfect, thoughtful book to pack in your carry-on. But even if you’re staying home, Habib’s smart, insightful writing will give all readers a new window on the world.
Reviewed by Norah Piehl
Habib, who grew up in Kerala, India, but now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and child, is primarily a translator. Perhaps that outlook --- along with her own identity as a relatively recent immigrant --- enables her to view the history of travel, and the ways we write, talk about and record our travel, through a different lens. In a series of wide-ranging chapters that also can be read largely as stand-alone essays, Habib explores the current state of travel for those who come from the so-called Third World (a label she herself uses) and the complicated history of travel, particularly as it relates to capitalism and European colonialism.
Tourism, Habib argues, was sparked by the Industrial Revolution in several key ways. New money and a growing middle class opened up the possibility of international travel to more Europeans and Americans, who also benefited from a rapidly growing transportation infrastructure abroad. It was designed, as Habib traces, to facilitate the plundering of resources (and, in some cases, people) from those countries, in turn enriching the white colonialists who subsequently used their growing disposable income to tour so-called exotic locales. Habib spends one particularly insightful chapter discussing Phileas Fogg, the protagonist of Jules Vernes’ AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS. Fogg’s daring feat was made possible, she argues, not by his fearless or adventurous spirit, but by the decades of colonial expansion that paved the way for him and whose evidence is right there in the book --- if you look for it.
The ways in which largely white, male travel writers from Europe and the United States chronicle their experience of travel to distant places is also telling. Habib identifies a tradition of “pseudiscovery,” the notion that various landmarks both natural and human-made were unknown or “lost” until being encountered by a white traveler (one example is Angkor Wat), as well as how most conventional travel narratives speak of interactions with nature in terms of battle: “conquering a mountain,” etc. The local people whose daily lives make these kinds of “conquests” possible are largely invisible in such narratives; here she centers them.
Habib’s exploration is not only historical in nature. She also writes about her own experience of “passportism,” recounting a time when her American-born husband wanted to take a spontaneous European vacation before she had gained US citizenship. He was unprepared by the various visas and other bureaucratic hoops that were required for her to make the identical trip that he, with his American credentials, could book with ease.
In one of the more personal chapters, Habib writes about traveling through Brooklyn by bus, in the early months of her daughter’s life, and how looking at her adopted city through a bus window and interacting with fellow passengers changed her outlook on both this place and her new identity as a mother. If your holiday plans include travel, AIRPLANE MODE is the perfect, thoughtful book to pack in your carry-on. But even if you’re staying home, Habib’s smart, insightful writing will give all readers a new window on the world.
Reviewed by Norah Piehl
December 29, 2023
For all my fellow travelers, people with powerful passports, or anyone interested in the history of travel with a postcolonial lens, this book is a must read.
Habib is a South Indian Muslim who moved to the US for school and ended up marrying an American and having a child with him. This is important background because it sets the stage for Habib’s method of examining travel. She explains how her husband spent months doing all the paperwork for her to get a visa to travel to France, but even he ended up defeated by the end (they did get the visa but he lost it at one point lol). She also explains where passports likely came from and how it’s all the French’s fault (and colonialism, and racism, and classism, etc.).
There is a ton of info in this book, from the history of whirling dervishes as persecuted minority to tourist event, to the arrogance of white European male backpackers who are on a six month tour but oppose immigration back home (and look down on Americans for taking a 2 week trip [can you tell I’m bitter]), to the history of bougainvillea. I also cried at a chapter talking about viewing elephants in the wild for the first time because it’s also how I feel and I can never enjoy zoos or sanctuaries again.
I do also want to note that Habib uses the term Third World through the book. The final few pages are a beautiful and moving tribute to what she still calls the Third World. Here is a quote from her: “To speak of the Third World is to bring it into being, piled on top of the other worlds but out of reach, almost invisible, blurred by traffic fumes and a bad reputation, except to those of us who grew up t/here. It’s not offensive to me. How can it be, when my soul is a Third World country? Its nasty women, bad
hombres, and shitholes are dear to me. Third World Third World Third World.”
It’s a beautiful conclusion to a beautiful and illuminating book. Highly recommend.
Habib is a South Indian Muslim who moved to the US for school and ended up marrying an American and having a child with him. This is important background because it sets the stage for Habib’s method of examining travel. She explains how her husband spent months doing all the paperwork for her to get a visa to travel to France, but even he ended up defeated by the end (they did get the visa but he lost it at one point lol). She also explains where passports likely came from and how it’s all the French’s fault (and colonialism, and racism, and classism, etc.).
There is a ton of info in this book, from the history of whirling dervishes as persecuted minority to tourist event, to the arrogance of white European male backpackers who are on a six month tour but oppose immigration back home (and look down on Americans for taking a 2 week trip [can you tell I’m bitter]), to the history of bougainvillea. I also cried at a chapter talking about viewing elephants in the wild for the first time because it’s also how I feel and I can never enjoy zoos or sanctuaries again.
I do also want to note that Habib uses the term Third World through the book. The final few pages are a beautiful and moving tribute to what she still calls the Third World. Here is a quote from her: “To speak of the Third World is to bring it into being, piled on top of the other worlds but out of reach, almost invisible, blurred by traffic fumes and a bad reputation, except to those of us who grew up t/here. It’s not offensive to me. How can it be, when my soul is a Third World country? Its nasty women, bad
hombres, and shitholes are dear to me. Third World Third World Third World.”
It’s a beautiful conclusion to a beautiful and illuminating book. Highly recommend.
April 6, 2024
an incredibly thought-provoking read. it’s just on thiiiiis side of pretentious. it could be a series of essays in the New Yorker and feel right at home. but really - i’ve never felt so seen. this was a really great read to just think about how, why, and the way class, history, and a level of privilege and racism has shaped modern travel.
Habib’s mediations on travels are very fascinating and fraught. i cannot begin to describe how much i identify with her words as a fellow passport holder of a non-“First World” country. just the indignity of not being able to travel freely; the extra emotional, temporal, and monetary expense required to simply *request* to enter a country for a couple of days; the patience needed at times to explain to my American & European friends why their comments about their time traveling to Thailand feels gross (even tho i’m so glad they had a great time visiting my home country!).
that said, it’s not a perfect book. i was very frustrated when Habib was being lazy in her language use (ex. white privilege is NOT a synonym for Americans!!). the history part is a bit more sprinkled in - it really read more like a meandering memoir (emphasis on meandering).
still - this was a really great read to just think about how, why, and the way class plays into travel. all “Third World” passport-holding peers should read this to feel validated. all my “First World” passport-holding friends should read this to understand just how fraught travel can be for those with less mobile passports. and everyone should read it to think through how we consume travel, how we’ve come to expect it as a right, and at what cost.
Habib’s mediations on travels are very fascinating and fraught. i cannot begin to describe how much i identify with her words as a fellow passport holder of a non-“First World” country. just the indignity of not being able to travel freely; the extra emotional, temporal, and monetary expense required to simply *request* to enter a country for a couple of days; the patience needed at times to explain to my American & European friends why their comments about their time traveling to Thailand feels gross (even tho i’m so glad they had a great time visiting my home country!).
that said, it’s not a perfect book. i was very frustrated when Habib was being lazy in her language use (ex. white privilege is NOT a synonym for Americans!!). the history part is a bit more sprinkled in - it really read more like a meandering memoir (emphasis on meandering).
still - this was a really great read to just think about how, why, and the way class plays into travel. all “Third World” passport-holding peers should read this to feel validated. all my “First World” passport-holding friends should read this to understand just how fraught travel can be for those with less mobile passports. and everyone should read it to think through how we consume travel, how we’ve come to expect it as a right, and at what cost.
March 25, 2024
I'd really love to know who came up with that subtitle. This is not a history of travel, nor is it particularly irreverent. It's a thoughtful critique of travel (which does include some information about the origins and history of travel) by someone who loves to travel, with some personal narrative thrown in for flavor. It's an interesting book and well worth reading! Just -- wow, that subtitle is doing it absolutely no favors. Even "A Personal History of Travel" would have been better.
As for the content of the book -- it is what it doesn't say on the tin. Habib analyzes who travels, how they travel, why they travel, and what it means to travel. She travels while brown, as an immigrant to the US from India, and so her experience of it is different from how rich-country tourists travel. I appreciated her perspective and especially her analysis of the difficulties and history of passports. (I already knew about what she calls passportism; if you have friends from poorer countries, you very quickly learn about the different classes of passports and travelers. But it was nice to see it all laid out like this.)
I will say, though, that as someone who does not travel -- I fully agree with Habib's father that travel is just avoidable discomfort, unless there are people who love at the other end of it, in which case it is necessary discomfort -- it was amusing to read such a critical commentary on travel written by someone who seems to travel more in a year than I have in my adult life. But, hey, the best criticism comes from a place of love!
As for the content of the book -- it is what it doesn't say on the tin. Habib analyzes who travels, how they travel, why they travel, and what it means to travel. She travels while brown, as an immigrant to the US from India, and so her experience of it is different from how rich-country tourists travel. I appreciated her perspective and especially her analysis of the difficulties and history of passports. (I already knew about what she calls passportism; if you have friends from poorer countries, you very quickly learn about the different classes of passports and travelers. But it was nice to see it all laid out like this.)
I will say, though, that as someone who does not travel -- I fully agree with Habib's father that travel is just avoidable discomfort, unless there are people who love at the other end of it, in which case it is necessary discomfort -- it was amusing to read such a critical commentary on travel written by someone who seems to travel more in a year than I have in my adult life. But, hey, the best criticism comes from a place of love!
January 15, 2024
Saw this at the library and wanted to borrow this for fun. With COVID people have been engaging in "revenge travel" and while I am not one of those people, I was curious as to what the author was going to say. I was also intrigued because the book was supposed to also explore what it was like navigating a world where you need a lot of money to travel, traveling as a member of a marginalized group, etc.
In a series of essays, author Habib talks about various experiences such as navigating the US immigration system, what it is like to go "home," moving to a new country, etc. Much of this are topics that are not exactly "unusual" in the sense that many others have gone through various adventures (it's not like she went to the moon!) but all the same her experience is a little different.
To be honest, this was dull. I did not know this was going to be a series of essays, nor did I find this humorous. Maybe it is one of those books where the person who experiences these things all funny at the time, but I was surprised to find that this book was not as interesting or marketed as it said.
I do think it will probably engage other readers though, especially if you're someone who has experienced similar issues, enjoy travel, have traveled to any of the places Habib mentioned, etc. But if you are looking for something that is genuinely funny or a more traditional travelogue, etc. this might not be it.
Borrowed from the library and that was best for me.
In a series of essays, author Habib talks about various experiences such as navigating the US immigration system, what it is like to go "home," moving to a new country, etc. Much of this are topics that are not exactly "unusual" in the sense that many others have gone through various adventures (it's not like she went to the moon!) but all the same her experience is a little different.
To be honest, this was dull. I did not know this was going to be a series of essays, nor did I find this humorous. Maybe it is one of those books where the person who experiences these things all funny at the time, but I was surprised to find that this book was not as interesting or marketed as it said.
I do think it will probably engage other readers though, especially if you're someone who has experienced similar issues, enjoy travel, have traveled to any of the places Habib mentioned, etc. But if you are looking for something that is genuinely funny or a more traditional travelogue, etc. this might not be it.
Borrowed from the library and that was best for me.
December 27, 2023
Shahnaz Habib has written a beautiful ode to travel, and the people and places modern tourism—and white colonialism—has written out. Part people’s history, part retelling of myth and legend, part autobiography, this often reads like an anthology, but Habib’s wandering ultimately culminates in a love letter to the Global South, which she pointedly calls the Third World (“How extra it is. How it propels you beyond primaries and binaries. The audacity of its unwieldy internal rhyme.”). She counters Eurocentric notions of travel with bold and well-supported arguments, noting that “wanderlust is made possible by colonialism and capitalism;” that passports were initially meant to prevent mobility, rather than aid it; that travel started well before Western Europeans “discovered” the world; that colonial natural history reinforced the authority of European surveillance and appropriation of resources; and that Empire used the possibility of travel, and its individualist/heroic undertones, to reinforce its own supremacy. Her writing is smart, precise, and beautifully crafted—ultimately hitting on the idea that travel tricks us into paying attention to the *now* on the margins between past and future, origin and destination.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 5, 2024
Disappointing book, I expected much more from it. Though it is an intriguing concept that interlaces her travels with the history of tourism and how it is built on privilege, this book is extremely disjointed and unstructured with no clear takeaways or message. She talks about how travel is not an unequivocal good that everyone proclaims it is, that it is reserved for the usually privileged white first-world individuals and is rather contrived and ignorant, but then she also says that she is extremely eager to wait in lines to see landmarks and that before you know it, we will all be too old to travel. She goes through various ideas from passports to travel writing to nature, with no clear connecting line except excerpts of her travels. It left me confused about what point to take away, except that travel is often made up (she brings up an example of 2 elephant sanctuaries owned by the same company or a dam that is opened to create a waterfall for white tourists). But I feel that the author had no clear point upon writing it except to put together a bunch of random places she's gone, which to me is a bit pretentious. Overall, I liked it for the historical facts about how tourism began and the various interesting stories about how strange it is, but most of the book was uninspiring filler. However, it is a pleasant and interesting (at times) read, especially if you are curious about tourism.
January 22, 2024
Shahnaz Habib covers a lot of ground (I guess the pun is intended since I am aware of it) in her book on travel.
I thought the part about how the passport system developed, that passports are actually more limiting than freeing, was the most interesting part of the book. That passports were originally often for internal control such as limiting the movement of slaves in the United States, peasants in monarchist France or movement of Asians or Africans in the British Empire. Having an American passport turns out to be far less limiting than having, say, an Indian passport. Which is what Habib had originally.
She writes about some of her many travels; about the differences between being a tourist and traveler; about travel and 19th century botanists; about travel and the promotion of specific sites for tourists; about the detrimental impact of the US highway system on Main Street in American towns, on the American train system and on its contribution to the segregation of rich from poor.
And she wrote on some topics I've probably already forgotten. Habib has a lot of thoughts on travel that might be an eye-opener to many people.
I thought the part about how the passport system developed, that passports are actually more limiting than freeing, was the most interesting part of the book. That passports were originally often for internal control such as limiting the movement of slaves in the United States, peasants in monarchist France or movement of Asians or Africans in the British Empire. Having an American passport turns out to be far less limiting than having, say, an Indian passport. Which is what Habib had originally.
She writes about some of her many travels; about the differences between being a tourist and traveler; about travel and 19th century botanists; about travel and the promotion of specific sites for tourists; about the detrimental impact of the US highway system on Main Street in American towns, on the American train system and on its contribution to the segregation of rich from poor.
And she wrote on some topics I've probably already forgotten. Habib has a lot of thoughts on travel that might be an eye-opener to many people.
March 17, 2024
The subtitle is "an irreverent history of travel", which this reviewer gathers is what the publisher recommended and the author agreed to in order to get published. Something like "notes and observations on white male privilege in travel" would be closer to the mark and set expectations of the reader accordingly.
Ms. Habib indeed gives us plenty to think about and chew on, and effectively ties travel as a privilege of the elite (originally) in England, western Europe and America to exploitation of peoples and resources in sub-Saharan, south Asian and other countries. One supposes it is indeed "irreverent" in that the author has had the courage and guts to call out inequalities set off by travel that exist to this day.
If the reader cares to look, it certainly asks the question in our travel-hungry society: what peoples are continuing to be exploited and disadvantaged by your filling your desires and needs to travel to strange and exotic places?
Ms. Habib indeed gives us plenty to think about and chew on, and effectively ties travel as a privilege of the elite (originally) in England, western Europe and America to exploitation of peoples and resources in sub-Saharan, south Asian and other countries. One supposes it is indeed "irreverent" in that the author has had the courage and guts to call out inequalities set off by travel that exist to this day.
If the reader cares to look, it certainly asks the question in our travel-hungry society: what peoples are continuing to be exploited and disadvantaged by your filling your desires and needs to travel to strange and exotic places?
February 25, 2024
I do love books that make me see the world a little differently. Airplane Mode starts with a description of “passportism” which I’d never heard of, and does some excellent analyses of the ways travel trends have evolved through history, and how different the perspective can be from a colonizing country vs. a colonized one. Things that will stay with me:
- The author’s father who hates travel, but has a deep worldliness from reading.
- Re: Marco Polo - “why is it an achievement to be the first European to reach China? Who is that an achievement for?”
- Modern wanderlust = insatiability of consumption
- Two types of travel: the Grand Tour model, acquiring cultural education, or the Third World model, adventure and “pseudiscovery”
This book made me think a lot about my own travels, and motivations for travel.
- The author’s father who hates travel, but has a deep worldliness from reading.
- Re: Marco Polo - “why is it an achievement to be the first European to reach China? Who is that an achievement for?”
- Modern wanderlust = insatiability of consumption
- Two types of travel: the Grand Tour model, acquiring cultural education, or the Third World model, adventure and “pseudiscovery”
This book made me think a lot about my own travels, and motivations for travel.
April 15, 2024
One of those books that make you feel like you're seeing the real world for the first time.
All of the buried histories, whitewashed crimes, forgotten stories, hidden meanings, and secret underpinnings.
All of the things that we overlook or underappreciate or overvalue.
All that is tragic and mysterious and fragile and beautiful, wherever you may be, right where you are.
Not "irreverent" at all, but in fact a essential reader for anyone who claims to love travel or food or culture, or in any other way believes themselves to be a citizen of the world. This is an introduction to the world beneath the veneer.
All of the buried histories, whitewashed crimes, forgotten stories, hidden meanings, and secret underpinnings.
All of the things that we overlook or underappreciate or overvalue.
All that is tragic and mysterious and fragile and beautiful, wherever you may be, right where you are.
Not "irreverent" at all, but in fact a essential reader for anyone who claims to love travel or food or culture, or in any other way believes themselves to be a citizen of the world. This is an introduction to the world beneath the veneer.
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