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Who Gets to Describe the Place
Mara wanted the page to be fair. A magazine had asked for a short piece about a coastal town where she had stayed only a few days, and the old travel books on her desk showed her the usual shape. The writer arrives, marks what seems strange, and explains the place to people who will never see it. She could write that page before lunch. She did not trust it.
She was copying a kind of travelogue tied to the years when European empires were expanding, written so readers at home could have the world catalogued. A curious traveler could still treat Europe as the measure of a proper life. People in such an account could become a display: unusual dress, habits called simple, land described as empty and waiting for someone else to improve it.