Author Q & A

Q&A with Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Author, 100 Places Every Woman Should Go

1. How did you start traveling?
My great-great Uncle Jake was a hobo who saw America from the peepholes of boxcars, so you could say that wanderlust is encoded in my DNA! My own journey began my senior year in high school when I attended a journalism conference in Washington DC that featured a keynote by a rockstar foreign correspondent for CNN. He’d covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and his stories of revolution marveled me. (The only thing people take to the streets and shake their fists about in my South Texas hometown is football.) When he finished, I ran up to the microphone and asked how I could be a foreign correspondent just like him. “Learn Russian,” he said. So I did. In 1996, I jetted off to Moscow for six months. I haven’t stopped traveling since.

2. Tell us about some of your travel adventures.
In Russia, I volunteered at a children’s shelter and mingled with Mafiosi. (My boyfriend’s best friend was a freelance hit man.) Next, I won a Henry Luce Scholarship to Asia, and spent the year polishing propaganda at the English mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing. Then I went to Cuba, where I belly danced with rumba queens and hung out with hip-hop artists. Those adventures are the subject of my first memoir: “Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana” (Villard/Random House, 2004). From there, I spent a year driving across the United States, documenting its history for a website for kids called The Odyssey (www.ustrek.org). I logged in more than 45,000 miles! My last big trip was seven months in Mexico in 2005, where I rallied with Zapatistas, sneaked into Oaxacan prisons, and interviewed scores of undocumented workers and their families. I’m currently compiling those stories into a memoir that will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2008.

3. Tell us about the process of writing “100 Places Every Woman Should Go.”
Every place is glorious in its own special way, but now and then, I stumble upon somewhere sacred. It usually takes a moment to recover, and when I do, I scan the room (or wilderness) for a pair of eyes to share it with. No matter where I am – downtown Manhattan or the Mongolian steppe – it is inevitably in the eyes of another woman that I find a similar spark or sense of wonderment. Afterward, I can only describe the place as one where “every woman should go.” When Travelers’ Tales approached me with this project, memories of these places surged forth. I scribbled down half the list in just one sitting, then started calling my girlfriends (and a few select boy friends).

4. Did you have any criteria in mind when selecting each place?
Pains were taken to include places populated by men who are at least somewhat respectful to foreign women. After all, catcalling from street corners and wandering hands in crowded subways can tarnish an otherwise fabulous trip. Another initial goal was to only choose places where local women, indigenous people, and the environment are treated with kindness, but it was nearly impossible to find 100 of them. Inequities are too omnipresent. Instead, I tried to highlight the work of local community groups and activists so that travelers know where to volunteer or send a check. Finally, I searched for places of significance to women: where we made history (i.e. the church where Joan of Arc stood trial), created works of art (i.e. Frida Kahlo’s studio), and performed miracles (i.e. the fields of Fatima, Portugal, where Madonna once made the sun do a swan dive over the sky). Also, places where goddesses reside within, like the volcanoes of Hawaii.

5. Have you visited every place in the book?
I wish! Sadly, I’ve only visited half. The other half came highly recommended by travelers I trust. (I interviewed more than one hundred while researching this book.) This was actually quite gratifying: not only did I get to share treasures I’ve personally discovered, I learned of so many more. I can’t wait to float down the bywaters of Kerala, India in a houseboat, or dance with voodoo priestesses in Benin.

6. You strongly advocate that women travel alone at least once in their life. Why?
So we can better hear Mother Road. She is one of the most formative teachers around. She will push you to your physical, spiritual, and psychological limits — then nudge you one step further. She will teach you to be self-reliant and self-sufficient, which will in turn make you self-confident. These are all lessons best learned alone.

7. But isn’t it scary?
Fear certainly does hold a lot of women back. Fear of our safety. Fear of getting lost. Fear of being alone. Yet, women never really travel alone. We are constantly becoming someone’s daughter, mother, sister. We elicit the empathy — and curiosity — of the people of the planet. There is always extra shelter or food for us.

8. Does that mean you’ve never been afraid?
Getting chased down a dark alley by a pack of drunk Russian men in Moscow was mildly terrifying, yes…. But that also happened once when I was living in Seattle.

9. So how do you stop a departing Trans-Siberian train?
Cry. While I hate to encourage women to rely on their perceived fragility or weakness to get by, in my experience, tears are mighty effective. There is just something about a lone woman crying that opens the doors, wallets, and hearts of the people of this planet. It is how I got all of my stolen documents replaced in Istanbul in record time, without penalty or rush fees. It is how my friend Daphne evaded costly traffic violations across Africa and literally stopped a departing airplane in Angola. Use only as a last reserve, but if you’re going to do it, go all the way. If you’re trying to avoid an exorbitant fine, jail sentence, or getting thrown off the Trans-Siberian train in the middle of the night for not having your papers in order, think: Oscar. Drop to your knees. Convulse. Make such a scene, passersby get involved. If the situation is truly critical, consider fainting — but only if you’ve gotten enough sympathetic people involved that your oppressor can’t just toss your body off the train! I personally find crying quite empowering: it gets things accomplished.

10. Any final advice for women travelers?
Return the Good Sister Karma. Spread the love. Be nice to female travelers you encounter at home, and try to help out your local sisters abroad. Make it a point to support female artisans, vendors, tour guides, and taxi drivers wherever you wander. Your money will almost certainly go where it is needed most.