Shahnaz Habib, a Brooklyn transplant with a serious case of wanderlust, offers a refreshing lens on the art of being a tourist, and ponders the journeys of adventurers, past and present, in her debut, Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel.
Habib, a writing instructor at Bay Path University and the New School, is an award-winning translator of fiction from Malayalam, her South Indian mother tongue, into English. Though her hometown of Kerala is "a tourist paradise, a land of vacations," she grew up on the sidelines of the tourism industry and was raised on mythological stories that served as travel portals into faraway lands. She is especially captivated by the enigmatic Queen of Sheba, and her long and perilous journey to visit the kingdom of Solomon in Jerusalem. In her travels, the Queen was driven by the same innate curiosity that fuels the author's own desire to visit new places. Unlike the Queen of Sheba, though, Habib was severely limited by the "stigma" of her Third World citizenship, with travel often precluded by expensive, convoluted visa application processes. Eventually, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen, and shares with readers the complicated emotions involved in officially renouncing her Indian citizenship.
Habib's evolution from a shy tourist tethered to guidebooks into a confident traveler is itself the transformation of a young immigrant unsure of her place in the world to a lifelong wanderer who knows she is entitled to go where she pleases. Airplane Mode, brimming with curious travel facts filtered through Habib's witty, conversational style, is an insightful literary companion for explorers of all stripes. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer