I recently spoke with Berlin-based Joe Baur, creator of the Travel Tomorrow podcast. (My part of the program starts at 14:00.) We talked about many things, from how to be a slightly less Ugly American Abroad to the telling fact that most Americans living in Germany call themselves immigrants, while most Americans living in Costa Rica call themselves expats.
But mostly we talked about the responsibility a writer has to the places she writes about. We dug deeper to discuss how that responsibility differs in nonfiction (my Living Abroad in Costa Rica guide) and fiction (the novel I’m shopping around, set in Costa Rica).
Here are a few excerpts:
Joe Baur, the host: Should anyone really be promoting an economically disadvantaged destination as a place to have an adventure or secure early retirement? What obligations to you feel as a writer to the destinations you’re covering?
Erin Van Rheenen: It’s a big responsibility to think that your book, or your advice, will affect someone’s life to the extent that they move from one country to another. [Living Abroad in Costa Rica] took me years to write and research. I was very careful to give both the pros and cons of Costa Rica. I think my publisher wished I had been more consistently sunny in my presentation.
I talked with dozens and dozens of people who made the move. The happiest people were those who had a very realistic idea of what the country was about when they moved there. They didn’t just move there because they thought it would be cheaper, but because they had some other drive to be in that specific location.
How to be a slightly less ugly American
18:50: Erin Van Rheenen: I have a responsibility to my readers, and I have a responsibility to the place that I am recommending. It’s tough. I have mixed feeling about being an agent of bringing more people to Costa Rica. The way I handle those mixed feelings is to be aware of our impact in developing countries, and to not be your typical ugly American, but to be an American who has done her homework, and understands the place of our country of origin in the larger world. The effect we’ve had on other countries, other people.
Most of the movement around the world, of course, is people crossing borders because they are feeling economic or political pressure or fleeing environmental disaster. I’m in a very privileged position to choose to move someplace else.
20:30: Whenever you are contemplating making a move like that, you need to kind of give yourself a crash course in world history and in the place of your own country in the larger scheme of things.
20:50: Our country has had its foot on the necks of so many countries, politically and economically and militarily. It’s good to know that as you venture out into the world. Not because you need to feel terrible about yourself and your country, but to understand how you will be received in the rest of the world, because of where you come from.
Costa Rica and the United States
Erin Van Rheenen: Costa Rica likes to think of itself as an exception to the rule in Central and South America. It bills itself as a haven of economic and political stability in an area that hasn’t seen much of that. They abolished their army in the 1940s. They’ve made strides towards carbon neutrality much more than some more developed countries. I don’t know if you know the story of when Lyndon Johnson, The American President, visited the country in the 1960s. Costa Rica had to borrow cannons from Panama to give the president the customary 21-gun salute.
On the other hand, if you look at the history, during the Contra fiasco, Americans used Costa Rica as a staging area to do their dirty work in Nicaragua. And the US has put a lot of economic pressure on Costa Rica in the terms of World Bank loans. I don’t know if you’ve heard of CAFTA; it’s the Central American version of NAFTA, so it’s the Central American Free Trade Agreement. It was ratified in 2004. Like all of these trade deals, the different signatories get different deals. I remember some Costa Rican economist saying that the negotiations between the United States and Costa Rica was like the fight between a tiger and a tied-up mule.
The responsibility of a fiction writer to the places and people she writes about
I feel like I’m defecting from travel writing to tell a deeper truth about place in fiction.
28:36: Erin Van Rheenen: One of the reasons I wrote a novel is because, as a travel writer and as someone researching Living Abroad in Costa Rica, I went all over the place, talked to all sorts of people, both Costa Rican and expat or immigrant. I learned so much about the workings of the place, especially the workings of outsiders coming into Costa Rica.
I could only cover a very small portion of that in my living abroad guide. So I feel like I’m defecting from travel writing to tell a deeper truth about place in fiction.
I feel like fiction writers have a slightly different responsibility to their readers.
First of all, the responsibility of fiction writers is to tell a good story. The second is to try to introduce people into a world and to get it right. It’s interesting that we were talking about immigration, because the character in my novel is a science teacher who is obsessed by the idea of invasive species. And when she goes to Costa Rica, I make her kind of an innocent. I don’t give her the knowledge of Costa Rica that I have gained. I make her a newcomer who may or may not have family ties there.
30:13: She is trying to find out if she, a middle class woman from a developed country, has a place in a developing country. What her role there is. If she even has a role.
31:05: I don’t have an easy answer as to whether someone like me, or the character in my novel, has a place in a place like Costa Rica. I’m writing the whole novel to wrestle with that question.
What is a writer’s responsibility to the places she writes about?
I don’t have an easy answer as to whether someone like me, or the character in my novel, has a place in a place like Costa Rica. I’m writing the whole novel to wrestle with that question.