That odd idea that one person can go to a foreign part and in this rather odd voice describe it to the folks back home doesn't make much sense in the post-colonial world.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.
Living abroad has heightened my interest in how foreigners regard the strange places we encounter.
The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.
It's fascinating when you're from another place, but you don't speak the language.
In a novel, even if you put a country in the wrong hemisphere, which I've done, I can always claim it was part of the additional weirdness of the story.
I'll tell you what colonial experience is.
People, when they first come to America, whether as travelers or settlers, become aware of a new and agreeable feeling: that the whole country is their oyster.
My first inkling of what the Commonwealth might really mean came only when I escaped the oddly British-tinged Asia I had known and went to live in the Philippines.
Traveling is one expression of the desire to cross boundaries.
It's a well known thing that ordinary perceptions can have a strange aspect when one is travelling.