Interview with Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Author of "100 Places Every Woman Should Go"

by Maya Rolbin-Ghanie

Stephanie Elizondo Griest has volunteered at children’s shelters in Russia, polished propaganda in China, and belly danced with rumba queens in Cuba. These and other adventures are the subject of her award-winning memoir: Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana (Villard/Random House, 2004). She spent much of 2005 traveling throughout Mexico, interviewing undocumented workers and rallying with Zapatistas, and Atria/Simon & Schuster will publish her memoir about it in the spring of 2008. Travelers' Tales will publish her guidebook 100 Places Every Woman Should Go in March 2007. Check out: http://www.aroundthebloc.com/.

MG: Judging from what I know of you, that you’ve traveled a lot and written a lot about it, it would seem that there is a direct correlation between movement and inspiration in your life. How would you describe the nature of this relationship?

SEG: Traveling for me has always been a form of social activism. Being a traveler holds the possibility of playing out one’s potential role as a modern type of cultural ambassador. It’s a chosen way of dealing with the world. But I must say I consider myself more of a journalist than a travel writer; traveling should be the root of calls for justice and awareness in the world.

MG: Describe the most empowering moment that you, as a traveler, have experienced.

SEG: That would be the year I spent living in a car: http://ustrek.org/. There were eight of us, four cars, and lots of laptops and cameras. We made a documentary about race, sex—about marginalized people around the States. We drove 44, 000 miles and hit 42 states. Our budget was $15 a day each. I realized around that time that traveling can be really cheap. I was absolutely amazed at people’s hospitality. There’s this book called “A People’s History of the US” by Howard Zin. You should check it out if you haven’t. Basically what we were doing was making the book come to life. We each worked on groups we could best represent: I was the Latina representative.

MG: Describe the most frightening moment you’ve experienced traveling.

SEG: Getting chased down a dark alley by a pack of drunk Russian men in Moscow was mildly terrifying...But that also happened once when I was living in Seattle. There was a language barrier on top of that, so I doubt anybody understood when I screamed “Help me!” Eventually I outran them, got a hold of some security guard and they disappeared.

MG: What was the first thing you had published and how did you go about it?

SEG: In my senior year of high school I won a contest with an essay I wrote about failing a driving test. It was in college that I really started freelancing for different magazines and newspapers. When I realized that I needed to write on my own terms I quit my job with the Associate Press, took a vow of poverty, and moved back in with my parents. Travel writers really get screwed over. There’s not really a huge market for travel writing. Guidebooks constitute the most marketable genre and even then, writers often travel on very limited budgets and don’t get paid much.

MG: What was your first experience of traveling alone? Where did you go and why?

SEG: I was 21 and I went to Cesky Krumlov, in the Czech Republic. I had been staying with a friend from Prague and we were supposed to go together, but she couldn’t and encouraged me to go anyway. I took a night bus with no hotel in mind, having been told that it wouldn’t be a problem when I got there. I was heading off for the unknown. I got there in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. Travelers were told to go back where they’d come from because there were no hotels. It just so happened to be the summer solstice and a huge medieval festival was happening. A woman who worked in the station eyed me skeptically before finding me a place to stay. I have never doubted that this was solely on account of my being a woman.

MG: Describe the fundamental existential circumstance of the woman traveler.

SEG: That we get looked after. We get to become people’s sisters and daughters. I think we get to see more.

MG: What’s been your experience of admittance or rejection from groups made up largely or solely of men?

SEG: Really, as a traveler I’ve often been made an honorary man. You get taken in by the man. Turkistan, for example. They’re gentler with women. Women travelers are allowed into both worlds.

MG: What would you say is the single most blatant disadvantage of traveling (alone) as a woman?

SEG: Being fondled, cat calls. The problem of menstrual hygiene is a big one. And you can’t sleep on park benches.

MG: If there is one thing that you insist every woman traveler try, what would that one thing be?

SEG: Go to your motherland. Seek your roots.

MG: Where are yours?

SEG: Half in a Mexican village, half in the Kansas prairie.