Traveling the world is not an easy thing to commit to. By exploring new places and immersing yourself in new cultures and communities, you must be willing to step away from your daily norms and let the experience open your mind in entirely new ways. Through this, you can tap into the mysteries of our existence.
These ten authors have all ventured out on pilgrimages, immersing themselves fully into a new world, and have learned not only about the people and places they visited, but also about themselves and where they fit into the greater world. Here are 10 nonfiction books about these authors’ journeys so you, too, can be inspired by their experiences.
Home Inside the Globe: Embracing Our Human Family by Gail Straub
In Gail Straub’s memoir Home Inside the Globe, she takes us along on her journey around the world to prove that learning from stories of humanity everywhere is the antidote to a world divided by difference. On her journey, Straub traverses the world from the Sahara to the Himalayas and meets a wide variety of people. Instead of focusing on all of the ways their lives differ, she finds that each person she meets makes her feel closer to humanity.
This powerful story combines a strong nonfiction narrative with lyrical storytelling to deliver a novel that aims to bridge the gap and inspire people to take an active role in the betterment of the world. It will harness a communal sense of humanity in a species spread so far from our roots that we often forget we are all one and the same.
Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor
Traveling with Pomegranates explores one of the most intimate yet complex human connections, the connection between a mother and a daughter. Mother and daughter duo, Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor, travel through Greece, Turkey, and France on a journey of discovery of spirituality and the self.
In Traveling with Pomegranates, Kidd and Taylor are able to reconnect with one another as they both find themselves growing older and questioning their next move in life, Kidd grappling with her creativity and Taylor with the questions of what she will do with her life after graduating from college. When spending time with one another and visiting sacred sites, they become inspired to find their destiny and purpose in life.
A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing: A Memoir Across Three Continents by Mary-Alice Daniel
In Mary-Alice Daniel’s coming-of-age memoir, A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing, she explores themes of belonging, dealing with topics of race, religion, family, culture, and identity in a childhood filled with constant moving. From her early childhood in Nigeria, she struggles with the question of lineage and belonging in terms of her tribal ancestry and which tribe she should belong to. Her move to England as a young girl started her cross-continental lifestyle, which further blurred the lines of who she was and where she belonged in the world.
Daniel writes with deep introspection as she maps out her own personal history and how the histories of the various continents and cultures she has grown up in have combined within her to shape who she is. While this book is so personal to Daniel, it also brings with it a deep consideration for the world we live in and how the ways of life we grow up with can never leave us, no matter how much we may try to escape them.
The Women I Think About At Night: Traveling the Paths of My Heroes by Mia Kankimäki
Bored with her life and questioning her womanhood, Mia Kankimäki embarks on a journey to new places, seeking to learn about the forgotten lives of female explorers and artists who inspire her. Kankimäki writes The Women I Think About At Night, not only as a memoir of travel and personal discovery, but also as a sort of biography of women like Karen Blixen and Yayoi Juama as she researches and finally shares their stories.
Kankimäki uses history as a roadmap to the path ahead. By remembering the challenges and overlooked impacts of women like the female Renaissance painters she searches for in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, she finds her own inspiration to move forward boldly as a woman in the world.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
Wild by Cheryl Strayed is the classic, against-all-odds tale of a woman who turns to nature to find herself. After the death of her mother and the loss of her marriage, things just kept heading downhill for Strayed. She decided that drastic measures needed to be taken to find herself, so with no real knowledge or experience, she set off on a journey to hike the Pacific Crest Trail.
Strayed takes us along on her journey with a warmth and relatability that many who have felt lost in life can relate to. She hikes thousands of miles from California to Washington State, with plenty of time along the way to contemplate, recenter, and heal in this inspiring story of how one journey can change your life.
Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang
In Somewhere in the Unknown World, Kao Kalia Yang brings together a collection of true stories about how refugees from Somalia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and more came together to create a new home in the Twin Cities in Minnesota.
Yang tells her own refugee story alongside the stories of those she has met in order to remind people of the courage refugees must have to make a home for themselves in a world with nationalism on the rise and the evil of difference outshining the beauty. These 14 stories of refugees’ strength and resilience offer an inspiring insight into humanity and how goodness is still possible even for those who flee the worst circumstances.
The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure by Rachel Friedman
If you’ve always been someone who plays it safe but have always secretly wanted to do something crazy, then The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost is perfect for you. Rachel Friedman was tired of playing it safe, so she spontaneously decided to visit Ireland, meeting new friends who encouraged her to go on a year-long journey that opened up her life to adventure.
While traveling, she learns the secrets of the world, including that there is no right or wrong way to live life, there is simply life, and you just have to live it. Friedman’s memoir focuses on the beauty of finding friendships in the most unexpected places and how much these connections can open your eyes to the larger world around you.
Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman
Rita Golden Gelman tells her extraordinary tale of how she left her life behind to find true connections with people from around the world in her travelogue, Tales of a Female Nomad. Through this story, she describes her many amazing experiences that helped her connect not only with people but also with diverse cultures and animals.
Gelaman didn’t just travel to visit, or even just to learn; she traveled to experience, which is why her nomadic existence was filled with unique and unbelievable stories. She encourages living a wild and unpredictable life filled with unknowns that keep our spirits young, and the joys that become forgotten once we have been condemned to adult life.
I Could Live Here: A Travel Memoir of Home and Belonging by Ellen Barone
I Could Live Here by Ellen Barone is a memoir about her and her husband traveling the world for long periods of time while searching for a place they can call their permanent home. It questions what it means to be at home in a place, what qualities one looks for in a home, and how to find a sense of belonging in a culture or country so far from where you were raised.
Home and belonging do not mean the same thing to everyone, which is why Barone and her husband contemplate how to find elements that feel like home in a nomadic lifestyle that is constantly changing. This is an interesting story that seeks to define home in a larger sense, with the idea that the world is our home.
A Trip of One’s Own: Hope, Heartbreak, and Why Traveling Solo Could Change Your Life by Kate Wills
Independent travel can be frightening, but it can also be liberating. This is what Kate Wills discovers in her memoir, A Trip of One’s Own. In this book, Wills writes beautifully about her reflections and discoveries as she travels through the world and changes her perspectives on her own life, breaking through any self-limiting thoughts that may come her way.
A Trip of One’s Own dives into the many insights of traveling alone through moments of courage, vulnerability, loneliness, and freedom. It inspires readers to adventure and to see solo traveling as not only a way to see the world, but also a way to find yourself and grow into an entirely new you.
Traveling the world allows you to feel connected to humanity and to yourself in ways you never have before. Sometimes you have to travel halfway across the globe and immerse yourself in places with people who are entirely unrecognizable to you, so you can finally recognize your place in the world. Reading books like these may inspire you to do some traveling and soul-searching of your own one day, or, after reading them, you may feel like you already have. Either way, happy reading, traveler!
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Find these books and more on our Nonfiction Reads You Can’t Miss bookshelf on Bookshop.org.
