Granta 157: Should We Have Stayed at Home?

Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #157

by William Atkins (Editor), Kate Harris

From Antarctica and the deserts of the US-Mexico border, to a Siberian whale-killing station and the alleyways of Taipei, these dispatches describe a world in perpetual motion (even when it is 'locked-down'). To travel, we are reminded, is to embrace the experience of being a stranger - to acknowledge that one person's frontier is another's home. In 1984 Granta published its first issue devoted to travel writing. Nearly forty years after that genre-defining volume, a new generation of writers from around the globe offers a new vision of what travel writing can be. Granta 157 is guest-edited by award-winning travel writer William Atkins . It

Jason Allen-Paisant remembers the trees of his childhood Jamaica from his home in Leeds
Carlos Manuel Alvarez navigates Cuba's customs system
Eliane Brum travels from her home in the Brazilian Amazon to Antarctica in the era of climate crisis
Francisco Cantu and Javier Zamora : a former border guard travels to the US-Mexico border with a former undocumented migrant who crossed the border as a child
Jennifer Croft 's richly illustrated essay on postcards and graffiti, inspired by Los Angeles
Bathsheba Demuth visits a whale-hunting station on the Bering Strait, Russia
Sinead Gleeson visits Brazil with Clarice Lispector
Kate Harris with the Tinglit people of the Taku River basin, Alaska
Artist Roni Horn on Iceland
Emmanuel Iduma returns to Lagos in his late father's footsteps, Nigeria
Kapka Kassabova among the gatherers of the ancient Mesta River, Bulgaria
Taran Khan with Afghan migrants in Germany and Kabul
Jessica J. Lee in the alleyways of Taipei, Taiwan, in search of her mother's home
Sven Lindqvist in the Mauritanian Sahara in 1987 - a previously unpublished essay by the late icon of travel writing
Ben Mauk among the volcanoes of Duterte's Philippines
Pascale Petit tracks tigers in Paris and India
Photographer James Tylor on the legacy of whaling in Indigenous South Australia

Genres: Travel, Short Stories, Nonfiction

280 pages, Paperback

Published November 18, 2021

Reviews

[Yuri Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Granta issued its first Travel Writing edition in 1984, since when there have been numerous editions dedicated to travel in general and many that dealt with specific locations. In this issue, William Atkins has gathered material to significantly redefine the genre. Shifting from the post-colonial tourist tone of the 1980s, he has included the observations of refugees and others who are on the move for reasons beyond their choice.
Rightly or wrongly, I have developed the habit of using Google maps Street Search to look at places I read about. This is perhaps a little unfair to writers, but many of us do it and I say writers should expect it, that they should see it as an impetus for them to give us more than the mere description of place. Most, of course, do give more. They include historical and cultural material, and give brief character sketches of fellow travellers and locals met along the way. Going further telling the stories of people who inhabit the landscape raises the old dilemma: Is it the writer’s tale to tell? Atkins has included several items addressing this problem.
Regarding the Google maps scenario – Jessica J. Lee, in one of the best pieces in this anthology, goes directly to that practice and invites the reader “should you find yourself online [to] hold the yellow stick figure above the map.” But this is a tease because she then tells us the unnamed lanes, forgotten between buildings, that she wishes to tell us about “do not exist in this mirror world.”
One of the better Grantas of late.

[Ben Rowe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about Granta. Sometimes I think the issues look nicer than they read. There is some of the best writing you can find inside Granta issues but you never really know what you are about to read with the next article which could be poetry, memoir, travel, fiction etc.

Sometimes it feels a bit overwritten, sometimes the writing is a bit safe but overall there is some great stuff in it but I am not sure I want to commit to reading 4 volumes a year.

This specific issue is all about travel writing and it couldnt have come at a worse time with many of the original ideas for traveling being stymied by the pandemic. Also with this written just at a time when we are starting to see and know how covid would change things the thoughts here seem to be just beginning to process it all.

There is a great range of places and voices in this collection and some left a solid impression on me. I like that Granta can do this, instead of the usual variety give you Travel Writing one issue and short fiction the next and a good variety in other issues. But most of the elements I have liked the best out of Granta issues such as fiction and poetry were not here.

A solid issue but one that the pandemic probably undermined and stopped being as interesting and fun as it might have otherwise been.

[cynthia long]

BEAUTIFUL. The best collection of essays and short form pieces about random but specific locations, the deconstruction of what travel is and means, and its significance to different people the world over, and the non-sentient beings among us. The best middle-ground between ethnography, rich social commentary and non-fiction storytelling. Has made me crave adventures, seeing the world through my unique lens and undergoing classic procedures around famous landmarks: ‘circling, looking, waiting a respectable amount of time before pulling out the camera’. Was so moved by the honesty and narrative of healing potential within travel provided by Javier Zamora and Francisco Cantu, about their travels to the US-Mexico border, to work through the trauma experienced there. The happenstance, chance encounters and experiences are rich with life and just reminded me not to pursue or seek out specific things in travelling but to embrace those moments of serendipity.

[Bee Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

First intro to Granta - enough to make me want to subscribe (but that’s another story - bloody Brexit).

[John Kelleher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this a mixed bag. Wonderful,pieces at the end from Elaine Brun and Sinead Gleason made up from some slower dull pieces in the beginning

[Bridget Bonaparte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really loved and surprised by this volume. Almost every single piece approaches the broad (and fraught), genre of “travel writing” in new ways. An excellent example of literary evolution.

[Jeremy Jl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent eclectic collection of new (travel) writing as usual from Granta.

[E]

"Traveling Secretary" by Emmanuel Iduma was incredible.

[simon crossley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Granta has come a long way from its reputation as a home of travel writing, to an edition that questions it in the name of climate change and accusations of cultural appropriation. Should We Have Stayed At Home? — asks the question with a strong hint of “yes”.

Travel writing in Granta is for me always something to be eagerly anticipated. So this inversion offers an intriguing angle of homespun tales. The narrative in the first person – but can the narrator in their locality still capture the story of an adventure?

In Granta 157, there is much that missed the mark for me. The series of letters between a former US Border Control agent and a migrant from El Salvador - lacked sufficient impact for me. A collection of drawings and photos about Iceland with words added by Roni Horn, were too abstract and light to give necessary impact.

However, the postcards and “graffiti” that was once written on their fronts (as addresses were once only allowed the backs) by Jennifer Croft, had a curiosity that required further interest in its particularity. Emmanuel Iduma’s thoughts on his family background in Nigeria while on a visit from America was a deeply reflective memoir.

Bathsheba Demuth’s description the plight of grey whales in far-east Russia moved me for its research and understanding of local cultures. However, the set of photographs by James Tylor of Australia with black rectangles in their centre, representing “what the colonisers have taken and destroyed” from native inhabitants, just failed to resonate – the artistic approach did not work for me and the narrative was too one sided in its view to justify being published.

The series of diary-like entries (referred to as “chronicles”) by Sinead Gleeson relates a trip to Brazil to give literary talks but ultimately lacks depth for me. Taran K. Khan enlightens us with an essay on the Afghan migrant community in Hamburg. Jessica J. Lee describes alleyways in Taipei close to where her mother was born was a personal tale albeit light.

Eliane Brum grapples with the “climate crisis” without necessarily adding more insight. She quotes Greta Thunberg as she sets off: “Our house is on fire”. She doubts her own course of events by staying “The Antarctic was a utopia realizing itself, but my species — me — doesn’t fit there. I am not alone in being out of place. There are more tourists, more fishing boats and more mineral exploration vessels. Worse, this utopia is melting.” So what to do? She asks “just because we can, should we?” That has been the rationale for centuries – to go places just because they are there. Instead she presents us with a neologism - ‘solastalgia’ for a world we know will soon be otherwise.

[Joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

With any collection of writing there are bound to be some authors/pieces of writing that appeal more to you as a reader and there are certainly some gems in this book. I loved The Dam by Taran N Khan - a reflection on Afghan refugees and asylum seekers from someone who knew Kabul and Afganistan and had visited Hamburg various times over many years. It made me think about how things change over time for people and also for cities. In An Alley (Return) by Jessica J Lee she returns to a neighbourhood in Taiwan she left as a baby (with her mother) and by walking city comes to understand it better and re-claims her past in some way - this was well-written and drew me into the exploration. I also really enjoyed From the centre of the world to the end of the world by Eliane Brum who lives in the Brazilian rainforestbut left there to go on a Greenpeace trip to the Antartic. The reflections on nature and environmental concerns were excellently conveyed in this piece of writing and stirred in me a desire to protect the antartic - if I ever was rich enough to go there I wouldn't after reading this. These were three that stood out to me, but were not the only ones I enjoyed. This isn't a travel writing book which in anyway is written to make tourists want to visit these places, but journeys made with differing purposes by very different people for different reasons. There were a couple (which I won't name) that I didn't enjoy so much mainly because I was too unfamiliar with the people/places/experiences to relate to them. But overall a good collection that will certainly make readers think.

[Garrett Zecker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite collection, but there were some outstanding pieces within it. I really enjoyed Javier Zamora and Francisco Cantu’s A Wider Patch of Sky. Roni Horn’s visual excerpts from travel logs were interesting, whimsical, tragic, and fun. I love to travel, see new things, and experience everything. Still, many of these stories are about travels that were necessary, at times dangerous, and often evoking the volume’s subtitle “Should We Have Stayed At Home?”, and I suppose the only thing that I felt with some of these pieces that I should have stayed at home and nonfiction that reads like a DMV waiting room. They are essential, necessary, and some interesting experiences, but for the most part, they weren’t entirely engaging for me. Glad I read it, but most pieces were not my favorite... Fiction is always my jam; these are all nonfiction contributions, so maybe that’s it.

[Ray Quirolgico · Rating 3 out of 5]

The world map near the start of this issue indicates that this collection of travel writing will touch every continent on Earth, and indeed that happens. Along the way, questions about cultural identity, colonization, war, violence, nationalism, carbon footprints, ecology, and (yes of course) even the COVID-19 pandemic get raised. However? The breadth of that global range seems to scatter the reader a bit and the travels in these writings feel a bit haphazard rather than intentionally gathered.

[Chris]

I really enjoyed this issue. From Bathsheba Demuth with the grey whales, their people and history, Ben Mauk on the terraces and with their people in the Philippines to Kate Harris and Elaine Brum writing from polar extremes (nearly) and their people, which, in Brum’s case, is ALL OF US, and Sinéad Gleeson’s wonderful adaptation of a Clarice Lispector writing form to tell of her own fortunes as a travel writer constrained by pandemic and politics.
James Tylor’s photography was strong. Jennifer Croft’s homage to postcards captured the essence of this communication.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Something about this collection left me cold. Maybe it's my own lack of travel opportunities over the last 18 months. Generally in a Granta I find one or two pieces that really appeal but this only contained one compelling piece. Not bad just not to my taste.

[Paul van Zwieten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful images by Roni Horn.

[Evan Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy all of the stories (some just didn't hold my attention), but for the ones I liked, I really liked.

[Siobhan Hypatia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant collection of travel pieces focusing on locations all around the world, calling out injustices and climate crisis.