How Living Abroad Informs and Inspires My Writing

How Living Abroad Informs and Inspires My Writing

How do our life experiences shape our writing? And how does being a writer shape our life experiences? As an American expatriate preparing to launch my debut novel into the world after nearly three decades of living abroad, I often wonder which came first—whether my life abroad made me into a writer, or whether some aspect of my personality that makes me a writer led me also to travel. Perhaps the answer is somewhere in between.

As a child, I spent much of my time quietly observing the behavior of people around me. Although our Massachusetts neighborhood was fairly homogenous, I was intrigued by the unique set of ideas, customs, and values that set each family apart from the rest. What would it be like to live among the four generations of women who lived across the street, buying Christmas presents in July and eating dinner at 5:00 pm sharp each evening? Or to grow up next door with the father who played long, soulful laments on his violin and the mother who wrote poetry on scraps of paper that she left in our mailbox?

How would my life be different if I were one of nine children in the lively, Italian household behind us with their fruit trees and vegetable patch, the rabbit hutch in the garage? Although I didn’t realize it at the time, this fascination with culture, and the role that it plays in defining who we are, would stay with me throughout my life.

My first extended stint abroad was during college when I spent a year in Tanzania as an exchange student at the University of Dar es Salaam, taking courses on Imperialism and Liberation, Literature and Revolution, and African Wood Carving. While the classes were interesting, the experience of living in a dorm together with my Tanzanian roommate was transformational. Soft-spoken and patient beyond reason, Flora taught me to collect water from the outdoor spigot, showed me how to wash my clothes on the communal washboard, and gently lectured me when I made careless mistakes, like mixing up the buckets of water for bathing and cooking. These were matters I’d never considered. Back home washing machines took care of the laundry, and water came from the tap; there was no need to worry about contaminating cooking water by bringing it into the bathroom. 

The experience of living in Tanzania jolted me out of my comfort zone, forcing me to rethink many preconceived notions about myself and the way I interacted with the world, taking for granted that my most immediate needs would be met. I was often lonely and disoriented. I resented how easily people made assumptions about me based on my nationality or skin color, and was even more upset when those assumptions proved true. Living and studying together with Tanzanian and other African students, I learned that there is more than one way to view the world, and that each is just as valid as the next. 

With time, I grew to love my life in Tanzania and made many friends. My favorite pastime was to listen to the stories of my dormmates and to catch a glimpse, if only for a moment, of what the world looked like through their eyes. By the time I left Dar Es Salaam one year later, I felt as if I was saying goodbye to a part of myself that would remain forever in Tanzania. My memories of that year are as vivid and multi-dimensional today as they were back then; I still recall the slope of land where the campus stands, the call of the chapati vendor in the stairwell, the feel of heat pricking my skin, and something else too, something in between a mood and a memory, a feeling that I can’t quite name but will always associate with that particular place and time in my life. 

After college, I went on to obtain my master’s degree in international relations and began a career in humanitarian affairs and development. The next decade took me from the U.S. to The Gambia, Angola, Mozambique, and Italy. Along the way, I met and married my Italian-Australian husband and had two wonderful daughters. Though I continued to work in international development, my real passion was not in the theory and practice of development but the people I met—the men, women and children I encountered through that work. I wanted to understand how these families lived their lives, not just what they ate or where they slept, but how they made sense of the world—their hopes and dreams, the folktales they told their children, what they believed happened after death. 

Reading was another way to travel to new lands and experience different cultures from the inside out. I especially liked novels that explored questions of culture, identity and belonging. Books like Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. By pulling me into the hearts and minds of their characters, these novels taught me something about myself, about what separates us and what brings us together, what it means to be human. 

It didn’t occur to me that I could write fiction. I never dreamed of being a writer as a child, never took creative writing classes in high-school or college. Then one day in Rome, a friend told me about an online writing course she was taking, and something clicked. I wrote my first short story that same year, just before turning 40. Not surprisingly, I found myself drawn to stories of self-discovery in which travel and exposure to other cultures leads to personal growth. A year later we moved to Malawi, and I began my first novel, about a young American woman who takes a year off from her PhD program to work in Malawi, and the love and self-knowledge she discovers in the process. 

Writing fiction gave me a chance to explore the sense of loss and displacement I experience every time we move country, and to capture the emotional connection I continue to feel for each and every place I have lived. It allowed me to tap back into my own memories, still fully formed in my mind and heart: The sounds and smells of the neighborhoods I’ve lived in, the dramas of my children and their friends. The drive to school. Each and every supermarket I’ve frequented over those years. The way the light looks a little different in each place.  

When we moved to Myanmar in 2013, I immersed myself in the new culture, taking language lessons, reading as much as I could about the country, and asking lots and lots of questions of the people I met. I didn’t intend to write another novel; I simply wanted to better understand my host country. After half a century of military rule, Myanmar was just beginning to open up to the world again. Our arrival coincided with the return of many, so-called “repats,” former Burmese nationals who’d been living in exile in different parts of the world for decades. I knew what it was to live far from home, but could only imagine how it must feel to return after 20, 30, 40 years of absence, not to mention the political turmoil the country underwent during that period.

What had their lives abroad been like, these repats, and how did it feel to now leave that other country and return to this place of their youth? What about their children and grandchildren who knew Myanmar only as an abstract concept, that place that makes their parents’ eyes mist over with longing and sadness? 

My debut novel, The Golden Land, was inspired by these and other questions about culture, identity, and belonging that have continued to pull at me throughout my life, finding their expression during the six years I lived in Yangon. My hope is that readers will experience some of the same magic I felt while living there, and that the novel will help raise awareness about the ongoing struggle for freedom and democracy in Myanmar today. More broadly, I hope The Golden Land will inspire those of you living in Myanmar and other parts of the world to write and share your own stories about the world we live in. What inspires you to write? 

—

Elizabeth Shick is the author of THE GOLDEN LAND (December 6, 2022; New Issues Poetry and Prose), winner of the 2021 AWP Prize for the Novel. A longtime American expatriate, she has lived and worked in Myanmar, Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, The Gambia, and Italy. She now resides in Dhaka, Bangladesh and West Tisbury, Massachusetts. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from Lesley University and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University. You can visit her online at elizabethshick.com.

Website: https://elizabethshick.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethShickAuthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabethshickauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lizshickauthor

THE GOLDEN LAND (December, 2022; New Issues Poetry and Prose) is the winner of the AWP Prize for the Novel. In the story, when Etta’s grandmother dies, she is compelled to travel to Myanmar to explore complicated adolescent memories of her grandmother’s family and the violence she witnessed there. Full of rich detail and complex relationships, The Golden Land explores those personal narratives that might lie beneath the surface of historical accounts.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: How To and Tips