Navigating Customs
Cumulus Press, $14
Full disclosure: three of my classmates from my Concordia days have short stories featured in Navigating Customs: New Travel Stories by 12 Writers <25
See, Navigating Customs isn’t your business-as-usual travel anthology. It’s got a couple of tricks up its sleeve, including the fact that all the contributors are under the age of 25. While this could come off as gimmicky, all of the writers showcased in the anthology happen to be genuinely thoughtful, creative people with an interesting variety of stories to share. They’re not bragging about their drunken nights at all-inclusive resorts or sharing antiseptic stories about guided tours across Europe. Instead, all of these young men and women have tales of life and death in foreign countries, for reasons ranging from community-building in Africa to sniffing out a good story in South America.
A second interesting addition to the book is the “Trestle Chapbook,” which features a short story by Cleo Paskal tucked beneath the inside cover’s flap. It’s almost like finding buried treasure, this not-so-secret addition to the books contents, and sticks with the theme by offering one of Paskal’s stories, written when she, too, was younger than 25.
In particular, I’d have to say that one of my favourite stories in the book was “Sisters” by Amy Attas. In it, she compares being the popular girl in high school to being white in Africa, which sounds like an odd connection, but actually makes a lot of sense. Attas questions women’s roles in society, both at home in Canada and abroad in Kenya, and makes you wonder where the line between sexual harassment and “cultural differences” really lies.
Some of the book’s stories are extremely personal, some are fabulously fictional, but all of them will make you think about that old saying “it’s not the destination, but the journey.” Going along with these storytellers for each of their rides–whether it’s in sickness or in health–is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a fellow traveller.
