Section 1: page 94
Though this book attempts to be feminist with its cast of empowered and determined female characters, it falls short of its initial goal. The book does not quite live up to its promise to show that failing once does not make you a failure. Rather, it just shows the failures of women. All this book does is reaffirm the values of hardcore feminists, prove the point of many sexists, and provide entertainment for the middle ground readers.
To a hardcore feminist, this is a book about being in a bad scenerio and making the most of it. The mistakes made by characters in this book can easily be blamed on other factors like weather, bad tour guides, and other tourists. Therefore it can be noted that the women in this book are put in bad situation but, through hard work and determination, overcome their challenges and becomes victorious. In the situations where success in not found, it can be said that despite their efforts, they technically failed but their positives attitudes made them winners. No matter what happens, you can put a feminist spin on this book.
On the other hand, this book is very easy to view from a sexist point of view. This book is basically about women being dumb and messing up. A typical character in this book sounds something like this, "I'm freespirited, blond, and naive. Also I decided to move to a foreign country without knowing anything about it or speaking the language. Then I left my belongings in a ________(restaurant, beach, etc) and when someone took my things, I was super surprised! Why is everyone so mean to me? Just because I make no attempt to adapt your culture doesn't mean I don't deserve respect too!". It is very easy to see the characters as dimwitted and clumsy people who make every possible mistake. A true sexist would see this as an example of why women are inferior to men.
To one who is neither a sexist nor a hardcore feminist, this is merely a humourus book with little depth. The book is worth a few laughs and sends a minor message of perserverance. Unfortunately, the cover is much more bold than the messages in the book.
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Wow. What I was going to write earlier now will make me look like a hardcore sexist, according to Hannah. Disclaimer: I am not sexist against women.
ReplyDeleteThis book, to me, seems like a mass gathering of complete idiocy. And while this doesn't undermine the characters themselves, as these mishaps could happen to anyway, it does undermine their stupid travel choices.
How would you take your two young children on a backpacking trip to a third-world island, traveling on a boat used to transport livestock, and NOT expect to wake up drenched in animal pee? Why, WHY would you skinny dip with a bunch of strangers in total darkness in an ocean, only to find your clothes stolen? And the most amusing to me: you got MALARIA, a deadly disease caused by parasites, and you're not taking it seriously. Instead, you continue to sleep in an open-air van in the jungles of Africa.
This is where Darwinism comes into play.
And yet, I'm not suggesting that I hate this book. I don't even particularly dislike it. One of the women, A.C. Hall, takes a vacation to Japan with her husband to go sightseeing. This is my favorite woman's story, because it is funny without including things like rabid turkeys, dogs procreating, Oregonians doing their stereotypical illegal drugs, and most horrifying of all, swallowing a Korean sea creature appetizingly paired to a certain male body part. No, Hall's particular story is the most tame and, consequently, the only one I didn't cringe at; it simply describes a sprained foot.
No, this book is not bad. It's even funny, and well-written. But it's hard to note these good qualities when every other sentence makes me cringe and makes me compromise with myself to finish the page.
Section 2: page 192
ReplyDeleteEven though this book is supposed to be about finding hope and faith in the world even though everything has gone bad, I have found a much stronger subject: naivety. Every person in this book is naive in one of three ways; they are either overly optimistic, poorly educated, or in denial. Below you will find my guide to each of the three types of naivety in this book.
Overly Optimistic
The "glass half full" women in this book who look at every aspect of the world as though it were a beautiful piece of art crafted by a million beautiful angels are just asking to have their hopes smashed into the ground like a dirty cigarette butt. Frankly, these women are dumb. They are so trusting that they open themselves up to any new adventures and accept danger like it was the best birthday gift they had ever gotten. These people say things like "What? Really? You think its a bad idea to be a translator from spanish to english even though I don't really speak spanish? No way, the people who hired me as a translator will accept me for who I am, because every person is beautiful and accepting". These overly optimistic and naive women need these vacation failures to teach them that the world is not a beautiful and crimeless place full of butterflies and rainbows.
Poorly Educated
This category is comprised of people who didn't do their research before traveling. Though it isn't a crime not to research a travel destination, checking out a library book on it is recommended. A great example of the poorly educated traveler is the woman in this book who decided to go to hike through a jungle famous for flash floods and then to sleep by the river because she didn't know about the flash foods. Really? This jungle is famous for these uber-dangerous floods, and you aren't going to google it first. This lady said her only resource while entering the jungle was "a hand-drawn map, not to scale". It honestly takes five minutes of research to avoid falling into this category, yet so many people are unwilling to spend those five minutes and end up ruining a very expensive vacation with stupidity.
In-Denial
Perhaps the greatest crime among the naive of the world is being in denial about dangers. These women are not hardcore optimists, they are pretty level headed; they have done their research, they know about the dangers of the world; yet they still insist upon venturing into ridiculous situations. Take for example the woman who knew that there was going to be a sheep-slaughter festival during her vacation. She wasn't an optimist, she knew there would be dead animals abound, and she wasn't un-educated about the festival, she knew it would occur in the streets during her vacation. Yet being in denial blinded her from the fact that the festival was going to be extremely gory. So she wandered into the festival ready to see dead sheep and as soon as she saw the entrails of a sheep, flipped out and left the town. Really lady? You don't expect to see organs at a slaughter festival? The epic cases of denial in this book are ridiculous, people need to be more realistic about the world around them.
Section #2
ReplyDeleteRather than focusing on the overall pitifulness featured numerous times on each page of this book, I will discuss my favorite story in the selection, "Spare Me" by Kristin Beck.
This is NOT another "we went to a foreign, third-world country and contracted a rare disease and then our kids got pooped on OOPS" story, like so many others in the book. Instead, this is a story written about a teenaged girl, and- imagine this- I might actually be able to relate to it. Even more unbelievable, I actually laughed while reading it, and not because it was so pathetically stupid and/or disgusting.
Beck, an eighteen year old, decides to spontaneously visit her too-cool college ex-boyfriend. Does she hope to get him back? Maybe. Does she want to get closure on the relationship? Probably not. Is she, just like all teenaged girls, thinking irrationally and naively? Yes, this is the most likely. Because of this, I can relate to teenaged girl idiocy, and Beck immediately becomes likeable to me.
Her car breaks down in a rural area in the middle of the six hour drive to her boyfriend's house (this is the stupidity of this particular story, because, to match the other pieces in this selection, it must have a certain degree of idiocy) not once, but twice. Worried that her boyfriend will be dying of worry in her absence, she hysterically flags down every trucker that she finds on the road, until she is so terrified and paranoid about the forest and the possible serial killers offering her help. Only then does she risk it all to get into a potential serial killer's truck for a lift to the nearest town. When she calls her boyfriend to ease his anxiety, he is not worried as she had thought but...asleep.
Reading the story over again, I realize that this is probably the most feminist of all. "Men are not worth it, they will only trick us into dangerous situations only to be apathetic in regards to our struggles", this turn of events screams at me.
Strangely, this doesn't bother me.
Section 2: through end
ReplyDeleteThis book has a very clear theme which readers notice right off the bat; even when everything goes wrong, you are still strong enough to overcome obstacles and succeed. I, on the other hand, found a very different theme; even though some people whine about everything and take what they have for granted, it does not mean that everyone else can't appreciate the beauty and wonders of the world. Though characters in the book may complain nonstop about tiny flaws surrounded by beauty, the reader is still able to view the beauty without paying much attention to the flaws.
A strong example of this is Lucy Bledsoe, a girl who gets a FREE vacation on a NICE SHIP in the BEAUTIFUL waters around the Dominican Republic and spends the whole time complaining about only having a few choices of bunks and having to work a little bit (a job which she was fired from on the first day because of her incompetency). Lucy, being a total pessimist, looks at the situation like this, "His stories made me reconsider my romantic view of the Puerto Viejo. Was our mooring here a financial decision? Was this where second-rate boats anchored?"(167). Instead of viewing the quaint little dock as cute as she originally had, Lucy decided that it was second rate just because the Supersized Tourist Cruises with thousands of people on them moored at a bigger dock. This opinion does not just originate from the view that newer is better, but from her extreme "the grass is always greener" pessimism. If her boat had docked at the newer port, Lucy probably would have complained that it wasn't quaint enough.
Now the paragraph above was just a direct translation of the book. The following is what I have drawn from it. It is possible to see the world no matter what your circumstance and even if the people around you whine, you can still have fun. When I read Lucy's tale I vowed to myself that even if I was in her situation, I would still be grateful that I was on an all expenses paid trip. If this book has taught me one thing, it is that everyone hates whiney snobs.
The women in this book can simply be sorted into two categories: self-pitying and melodramatic, or just plain naive and stupid.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to be harsh here. I'm sure these women's lovely, wonderful qualities are brought out in their natural habitats, probably in middle-upper-class suburban communities. I'm sure they display great strengh when faced with the daunting challenge of speaking at the next bookclub meeting or scheduling the monthly lunch at a restaurant all the attending mothers will like. But they do NOT belong in an African grassland, or an Asian jungle, or a Korean fishmarket.
Only one of the women in this book can be excused from this generalization. Because she is not self-pitying and melodramatic OR naive. She is completely, 100% BOTH. This woman, in her early twenties, has just undergone a mediocre breakup with her boyfriend and decides that the perfect cure is not chocolate or spending time with her friends. No, she wants to go to Africa. Melodramatic.
And then comes the idiotic part: she is too warm in her mosquito net-equipped, professional, safe, insect-protected tent, so she decides to sleep in an open van for a few nights in a jungle in Africa. No, she does not get bitten by a poisonous spider, or suffocated by a boa constrictor, or eaten by a tiger. No, this woman gets bitten by a mosquito and gets malaria. Yes, the same malaria that has been struggled against for decades, claims millions of lives a year, and, if left untreated, guarantees almost certain death.
When she is diagnosed, she doesn't seek medical attention like any normal, self-preserving person would. She basically blows the situation off. She sees it as a wholesome adventure, an exciting story she can tell her successful twenty-something friends during game night in her overpriced, boutique apartment.
Miraculously, and obviously, the woman lives to write her maddening story in this anthology. But it's times like these where one might wish that natural selection was still prevelant. Because when her children contract a deadly, vector-borne disease and decide to "go with the flow", they won't be so lucky.
Final Review
ReplyDeleteRating: 5 out of 10
This is, undoubtedly, the most feminist book I have ever read. Probably the most feminist book I have ever touched. Or seen.
And I know feminist. I've read Audre Lorde.
This novel is so obnoxiously feminist that you can pinpoint it at first glance as...well, obnoxiously feminist. The content of this book can truly be judged by its cover. So that's what I'm going to do.
Take, for example, the title: "The Unsavvy Traveler: Women's Comic Tales of Catastrophe". Below that is a list of the editors that compiled the book. Of course they are all women. Oh, and here's a surprise- when you look on the copyright page, everyone who came into contact was a woman. And if this book wasn't found on Hannah's dad's bookshelf, I could guarantee you that it has not come into contact with males since it was published. Ever.
Moving on to the back: "the irreproachable, unflappable travelers suddenly beset by the demonic whims of destiny". Excuse me? After looking up 60% of these words in the dictionary, I am confident that this statement is a lie. Irreproachable and unflappable? I can count twenty-seven and a half nervous breakdowns in this book. There are twenty-eight stories. These women are anything but that. And these so-called "demonic whims of destiny" are situations that these women, unknowingly but deliberately, put themselves into. Their bad luck is not fate, it is sheer stupidity.
All in all, this book tries very unsubtly to be ultra-feminist. And ultimately, it fails miserably at that. Because each story in this book does not empower women. It makes them look stupid. We laugh while reading this book because we can't believe that these people are this idiotic and unfortunate. And I'm sure it has spurred more than one "this is why women shouldn't leave the kitchen" comment.
Finally, a more accurate novel for "The Unsavvy Traveler: Women's Comic Tales of Catastrophe": "The Naive Vacationer: Making Fun (and making generalizations about) of Stupid Women in Dangerous Situations - ps, we are feminist".
Review of "The Unsavvy Traveler"
ReplyDeleteRating: 7 out of 10 (or a C-)
The Unsavvy Traveler, compiled by Pam Houston, is a collection of "heroic" tales about women traveling. Well, that's what 'ol Pam wants you to think anyway. In truth, The Unsavvy Traveler is a semi-sexisism inducing compilation of painful stories that really only gets a passing grade because of its humor value. This book is essentially America's Funniest Home Videos starring women and instead of yelling in agony when they get his by a blindfolded kid swinging at a pinata, they yell "Yeah women's rights! I am free and independent". The book is a bit hard to read and really just mind-numbingly dumb.
Fortunately, this book does have one redeeming quality, its humor. I was actually able to enjoy this book when I was laughing at the stupidity of the characters in it. When reading this book, I took some time off from being annoyed at the characters so I would have more time to make fun of them. Making fun of characters/situations is a specialty of mine and I had plenty of opportunity to let that talent shine through. I mean honestly, a girl who crashes her boyfriend's best friend's bachelor party and then is surprised when her boyfriend doesn't give her his undivided attention, is absolute comedic gold. There is so much to make fun of, that his book can become a bit exhausting.
Overall, this book has a ratio of 70% whiny and unbearable and 30% hilariously stupid, which earns it a 7 out of 10, which is a C- by school standards. So while this book technically still has a "passing grade", it is not recommended. A sexist will find this book too feminist, a feminist will find this book accidently sexist, and anyone on the "middle ground" will find this book barely bearable. While Ana thinks this book should be called "The Naive Vacationr: Making Fun (and making generalizations about) of Stupid Women in Dangerous Situations", I find "I'd Like The First Ticket to Somewhere Dangerous: Whiny Accounts of Stupid Ideas" a much more appropriate title.