Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award * Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award in Travel Essays * Winner of the ForeWord Reviews IndieFab Book of the Year in Travel Essays* Publishers Weekly Top Ten Travel Book * National Geographic Book Club Pick

The debut memoir from award-winning author Alden Jones?"a witty and daring chronicle" (The Rumpus) and "mesmerizing travelogue" (Shelf Awareness) that "is smart and thoughtful, and also a page-turner from second one" (The Huffington Post)?explores the ethics of an American traveler moving through the world.

We travel in search of what is unknown to us, but what costs are attached to the exoticism of the traveling life? Over the course of fifteen years, Alden Jones travels to Central and South America, Asia, Cuba, Egypt, and around the world on a ship, sometimes for extended stretches, other times as an observer, a photographer, or an educator for brief trips. She struggles with her shifting identity as a tourist and a traveler, and considers a third option: going native. Does the true traveler seek to integrate into a new culture? Is there something suspect about seeking out the charm of the unfamiliar?

The Blind Masseuse tackles these and other ethical questions through a series of riveting travelogues. Jones is swept into a protest against the privatization of water in Bolivia, recovers from heartbreak by studying Spanish grammar in Nicaragua, creates a photo show from a series of blurry photographs taken out a bus window in Myanmar, gets close with an Angola war veteran in Cuba, and finds herself returning repeatedly to Costa Rica, where she lived for a year as a volunteer English teacher. The relationships she forms along the way reflect how someone with a traveler's identity must make peace with "growing up" and "settling down."

The Blind Masseuse is a candid, insightful, and thought-provoking memoir that is sure to trigger lively conversations about American identity, cross-cultural communication, and about how, and why, we travel.

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• Religion & SpiritualitySpiritualityPersonal Transformation

• Publication Date: November 15, 2013
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 192 Pages
• File Size: 486 KB