Women on the Road

"For a lot of its history, the road trip has conjured predominantly white, straight, masculine images (see literature from Homer to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Jack Kerouac), but of course, that's never been true. Women have always voyaged, whether to follow seasonal resources, relocate or migrate, work to make a better life, or to make art and dream. The road is also one of our homes.

Elizabeth Bradfield, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, and Tess Taylor have each written books that hold poems and photographs. Bradfields Toward Antarctica uses images and Japanese haibun, a travel-inspired form, to share her work as a naturalist and guide on ecotour ships in Antarctica. Griffiths's Seeing the Body holds poems and portraits of herself in transit through the American landscape, mapping her journeys through grief. Taylor's Last West follows the path of 1930s photographer Dorothea Lange through California, alternating Lange's historic photos with contemporary poems to show how Lange's past chimes eerily with our own present." 

More in this piece on women rewriting travel through poetry and photography.

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