Airplane Mode: A Passive-Aggressive History of Travel - Shahnaz Habib

A deeply witty, intensely thought-provoking, and beautifully subversive cultural history of tourism. Written by Brooklyn-based essayist and JCB Prize-winning translator Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode is a powerful debut that dismantles traditional Eurocentric travel writing through the lens of a Third World-raised woman of color.

For centuries, mainstream travelogues have painted exploration as a simple, romantic pursuit of wanderlust. But for Shahnaz Habib, travel has always been a complicated pleasure. In a world where the ease of a journey is strictly dictated by the power of one's passport and the color of one's skin, she asks a vital question: What does it mean to be a joyful traveler when we live in the shared ruins of colonialism, rampant capitalism, and climate change?

With sharp humor and deep cultural insight, this book traces the underlying power dynamics of global tourism, examining exactly who gets to travel freely and who gets the privilege to document the experience. Habib seamlessly weaves these global structures into her own rich personal narrative—from her childhood memories of family road trips across India, to her adult curiosities exploring new countries, and her lived reality as an immigrant handling the emotional and bureaucratic weight of annual transcontinental round trips. Woven throughout are brilliant, playful analyses of everyday travel artifacts: the history of passports, the monotony of baggage carousels, the colonial migration of bougainvilleas, the bias of guidebooks, and the capitalist commodification of "wanderlust." This is a deeply curious, joyful, yet unapologetically candid look at a troubled and beloved human activity.

Why This Subversive Travel History Belongs on Your Bookshelf:

• A Fresh, Crucial Perspective: Reclaims the travel narrative from the standard Euro-American consumerist perspective, centering the voice of a South Asian immigrant woman.

• Brilliant Artifact Analyses: Offers witty, unexpected micro-histories of everyday travel objects like trains, passports, and airport luggage carousels.

• Celebrated Literary Pedigree: Written by the acclaimed translator of Jasmine Days (Winner of the prestigious 2018 JCB Prize for Literature), ensuring stunning prose and lyrical storytelling.