5 Great Travel Memoirs Written by Women

In Wild, Strayed conquers the 1000-mile hike of the Pacific trail alone. Reeling from her mother’s death and a failed marriage, Strayed’s story is raw, funny and ultimately healing. A must-read in the travel genre memoir.

What started out as a young woman wanting to become a foreign correspondent, evolves into a memoir that travels through communist Russia, Beijing’s underground gay scene and political marches in Cuba. Worth reading for the stories of love and cultural mishaps, you’ll definitely have wanderlust after finishing this memoir.

Part memoir, part poem, part meditative letter, Lispector moving, philosophical language takes us on a journey to different places but more importantly takes us on an exploration of the self. Refusing any traditional structure of narrative, Aagua Viva’s musings and meanderings come together to create a beautiful, soulful work.

Gelman was not a fearless, in-shape, young, adventurer, embarking on world travel. She was middle-aged and separated from her husband with little knowledge of where to go and what she wanted to do. She ends up sleeping with sea lions in the Galapagos Islands, living in a Zapotec village in Mexico and exploring New Zealand, Bali and Thailand. Taking place over 15 years, this memoir gives reader a first-hand account of Gelman’s personal evolution and breaks our stereotypical image of the world traveler.

There are plenty of memoirs about how Paris’ sophistication has transformative powers, about its allure and mystique. This travel memoir takes a different route. Taking on the travel memoir genre through a more historical perspective, this memoir explores how Paris shaped three women: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis. It takes us back to a time before these women were cultural and intellectual icons and were just ambitious young things trying to soak up a city.