The Accidental Traveller: Priscila Uppal’s Search for Her Fugitive Brazilian Mother

Abstract

Travel writing is often perceived as being inevitably informed by a colonial ethos, particularly since the authors of travelogues by necessity must discern differences between their homelands and the societies they describe. However, Priscila Uppal’s 2013 memoir Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother illustrates that accounts of journeys to other countries are not always primarily motivated by global politics but rather by family dynamics. After all, sometimes one sees a country in a given manner simply because it happens to be the birthplace of people one has come to resent, such as the mother who abandoned you as a child.

Keywords

• canada
• brazil
• travel
• transcontinental crossings