Stranger in a Strange Land: Americans Traveling to Other Cultures

Since it’s summer and the perfect time to travel, we’re kicking off our Crossing Cultural Borders series with stories about American children and teens physically crossing the borders into other countries and experiencing other cultures.

Exploring another country is so exciting yet, at the same time, being constantly immersed in a completely foreign environment often forces one to question what they know as familiar, including one's sense of self. Such a journey lends itself easily to the typical teen coming-of-age story. Yet exploring different cultures is also exciting for younger kids who love adventure.

For this first topic, Renee and I discussed examples of books where the American protagonist journeyed outside of America. Everything she came up with was about a multicultural American child traveling in search of their cultural roots. But I was looking for stories of a white mainstream American child confronting a completely foreign culture, a child’s version of the Lawrence of Arabia story.

So combining our interests, here are some subtopics for this week:

1) Ethnic-American child traveling to the country of parents’ or ancestors' origin
2) Mainstream white American child visiting a foreign country

Of all the six main categories on the list, I had personally had the most difficulty coming up with examples of fictional books depicting stranger in a strange land. I actually had to do research to find examples, and I don’t know if that’s enough.

So we’re asking for your suggestions for children’s and YA books. Thank you in advance for your comments!


Our Related Postings:

• Shanghai Messenger (PB)
  
• A Few More Strangers in Strange Lands(PB)
  
• American Girls Educated Abroad (MG)
  
• Americans Summering in their Second Home (MG)
  
• Americans Discovering Their Cultural Roots (MG/YA)
  
• Americans Boys Abroad (YA)