Stamped: An Anti-Travel Novel

by Kawika Guillermo

Exasperated by the small-minded tyranny of his hometown, Skyler Faralan travels to Southeast Asia with $500 and a death wish. After months of wandering, he crosses paths with other dejected Sophea, a short-fused NGO worker; Arthur, a brazen expat abandoned by his wife and son; and Winston, a defiant intellectual exile. Bound by pleasure-fueled self-destruction, the group flounders from one Asian city to another, confronting the mixture of grief, betrayal, and discrimination that caused them to travel in the first place.

“Guillermo tells the stories of American expatriates seeking to lose or remake themselves in the far-flung corners of Asia. His narrative voice—steady, visual, and evocative—is complemented by his keen ear for dialogue.”
—Peter Bacho, author of Cebu and winner
of the American Book Award

“Guillermo’s novel teaches the reader how to engage the world and reveals the very best about being a traveler rather than a tourist. We follow not only a vivid visual adventure across Asia, but also a linguistic journey into understanding new language and a definition of ‘we’ that is inclusive and empowering and revealing.”
—Shawn Hsu Wong, author of Homebase
and American Knees

Kawika Guillermo moves and writes throughout Asia and North America, usually embarking from his station in Hong Kong. This is his first novel.

Genres: Novels, Fiction

362 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 15, 2018

About the author

Kawika Guillermo is the author of Stamped: an anti-travel novel (Westphalia Press, 2018), and Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific (Rutgers University Press, 2018) written under his legal name Christopher B. Patterson. His stories can be found in The Cimarron Review, Drunken Boat, Word Riot, The Hawai’i Pacific Review, Smokelong Quarterly, and decomP Magazine, where he serves as the Prose Editor. He works as an Assistant Professor of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia.

Reviews

[Vincent Ternida · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoy interconnected short stories that build upon a larger piece, such as Kawika Guillermo's "Stamped". When I read the write up, I wanted to read it right away as the blurb reminded me to Rolf Potts' 'Vagabonding' mixed with Alex Garland's earlier works such as 'Tesseract' and 'The Beach'. What I got is a 'Flaneur' take on travel and unlike most travel books that sell the single minded proposition that travel is absolutely something everyone has to do like eating, sleeping, and bathing... it also focuses on the human costs of travel and how it affects the travelers in themselves and possibly causing cognitive dissonance for its readers.

Guillermo's charismatic use of language, both angry and profound, which transpires with his handsome characters-- it debunks popular adage as well as proves an eye-opening account on how travel changes not only the people traveling, but also what it means for the people that are left behind. One of my favorite reads of the year.

[Rosinka · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are are certain things one expects from a travel novel. Immersive locations. Reflections on homeland left behind.Tastes of the exotic which lead to an increased familiarity of the foreign...
True to its title Stamped: An Anti-Travel Novel delivers none of these, at least not by the established rules.
Starting out as a series of seemingly unrelated episodes, much as the namesake stamps in a passport, he novel develops a lose narrative exploring the various faces of the abroad-experience. Some scenes obscure, some achingly familiar - a traveled reader recognizes them as permutations of the myriad possibilities of travel.
Stamped is not an easy read, nor is it always a pleasant one. And yet the novel is thoroughly intriguing.
Guilliermo's characters are like a faulty grenade launched into the world with its safety pin out; the high chance of disaster keeping the reader entranced. It is the flawedness of characters that make the "big themes" of the novel ring true. As the volatile young adults traipse around Asia often confused and all but lost, they are forced to face and question the matters of identity, sexuality, race, death, justice, loss, escape... making them grow. Not grow up as your typical book character, but grow - expanded by the experiences.
Somewhat surprisingly, the ending of Stamped is hopeful, if very much left open. There are very few answers and no final solutions to the life questions posed. Instead, the reader is left slightly winded and echoing with camaraderie to others who've given in to wanderlust and embraced the state of being gone.

[Nathalie Santos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the intimate detail of each character's story. Every character has a set of desires and dysfunctions that are described in beautiful, thoughtful prose. However, the familiarity, humour and off-beat culture will feel so familiar to those who have travelled with friends with all walks of life, and together lived in a way that does not resemble a sanitized, picture perfect travel album. My favourite bits surrounded the gender-fluidity of Skyler. My favourite quote is when Skyler goes to a sauna and he's too nervous to ask for entry into the women's section. "With Sophea, he was one of the girls, without her, a pervert hoping to sneak a peek." That and many bits of Skyler's story really resonated with me as a non-binary reader.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise was really promising - a bunch of washed out, wannabe expats and backpackers travel around Asia together while trying to figure their lives out - and the locations evoked a lot of nostalgia for me.

But the story never really WENT anywhere. Nothing gets resolved one way or another. A lot of set up for no pay off, which sucked, because the first 2/3 of the book were pretty good.