Those who have spent a substantial amount of time outside of their homelands know that living abroad can give fresh perspective on one's personal and even national identity. Are those insights gleaned abroad of a purely individual nature, or do they in their recorded forms hold promise for the scholarly study of national identity formation? The editors and authors of Strange Pilgrimages: Exile, Travel, and National Identity in Latin America, 1880-1900s answer that question in the affirmative. The volume, a collection of fourteen essays and three short primary texts about Latin Americans' experience abroad, aims to provide "case studies not only for intellectual and social historians but also for all people concerned with the issue of national identity formation"(xi). The book also includes a short but useful bibliography and filmography.

The appearance of this book appears timely, given the growing academic focus on transnationalism, which includes the movement of people, capital, and ideas across borders and oceans. The editors rightly point out that while historians are familiar with the travel experiences of North Atlantic explorers, scientists, capitalists, and writers in Latin America, rarely have we plumbed the vast body of literature recounting Latin Americans' extensive journeys abroad. There exist rich accounts of Latin American political exiles, students, artists, and adventurers who lived in Europe and North America for periods spanning a few months to decades. Their diaries, novels, travel stories, and oral accounts contain valuable insights into the lives of those individuals --many of whom returned to their countries of origin and took on influential roles in politics, literature, and society-- as well as their changing ideas about Latin America and its place in the world system.

Strange Pilgrimages only partially succeeds in taking on this ambitious project. A respectable first attempt at synthesizing the vast arena of materials pertaining to Latin American exile and travel, the volume falls short in two ways. First, many of the individual essays do not offer much beyond the introduction of some novel or as yet untapped subjects and/or sources (there are a number of excellent essays, which I describe below). Most, for instance, do not explain the significance of returning Latin American travelers to their homeland and/or what the stories reveal about larger historical issues. This seems a crucial point, since the question of impact is vital to justifying the new direction of study called for in this book.

Second, the conceptual threads introduced by the editors are easily lost in the disparate topics and unfocused writing of many of the essays. Part of the problem, in my view, has to do with the overall conception of the book and selection of essays. While the accounts of travelers and exiles may have something to say to us, this book does not tell us what the two types of experiences have in common. The perspective and reflection of a student, an artist, or one seeking adventure in a foreign environment is very different from one forced from the homeland. Strange Pilgrimages does not knit those views together persuasively. What we are left with is a collection of case studies --some well conceived and well written, some not-- about a diverse group of individuals abroad.

Taken as a whole, the book has an impressive scope. Essays range (in chronological order) from the immediate post-Independence period to the 1950s. The editors were careful to include a variety of Latin American countries of origin, including Venezuela, Central America, and Cuba. Admirably, the volume includes a number of accounts on the experience of women, who, despite their large participation, have until now been overshadowed by mens' stories; Ingrid Fey's essay on Latin American women living in turn-of-the-century Paris makes this point abundantly clear. Strange Pilgrimages is, however, less expansive in envisioning foreign sites of Latin American travel and exile. Accounts of the Latin American experience in England, France, and the United States are heavily represented; notable exceptions are essays that include Russia, Italy, and Spain (one each). I found the lack of attention to this last country especially curious, given the centuries-long cross-fertilization of scientific, philosophical, and artistic ideas between Spain and its former colonies, and the role of Spain in providing Latin Americans with a home (or at least a foil) at different historical moments.

My criticisms notwithstanding, Strange Pilgrimages could be useful in college classes on the literature, history, or sociology of exile. Moreover, scholars or advanced students may find nuggets of valuable scholarship in some of the individual essays, which at their best are an interesting blend of cultural, social, and intellectual history. (Most of the essays' authors are historians, yet the book takes a decidedly interdisciplinary approach.)

For example, John Chuchiak IV explains how Mexican Justo Sierra O'Reilly's time spent in the U.S. South influenced 19th-century interpretations of the Yucatan Maya. Daniela Spenser offers a fascinating vignette of the meeting of Mexican and Soviet revolutionaries in the 1920s. She does an excellent job explaining how their forays to the Communist mecca helped to revise their ideas about their own society, and eventually shaped revolutionary policy in Mexico. Another study, by Arthur Schmidt, looks at the influential Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio, exploring first the effect of U.S. training on his thinking, and then his role as an early scholar of the relations between Mexico and its Northern neighbor. Silvina Montenegro looks at the contrasting cases of two Argentine travelers in Spain who took opposite sides during the Spanish Civil War, and then tells us how each man applied the "lessons" learned in Spain to the specific problems facing Argentina. Finally, Darién J. Davis's engaging chapter on Brazilian singer and actress Carmen Miranda takes the reader up to the recent past and reveals the ambiguous roles and the tensions inherent in popular Latin American artists' relationships with their homelands once they have "made it big" in the United States. These essays, which unfortunately are not representative of Strange Pilgrimages as a whole, indicate the promise of the book's admittedly ambitious research agenda.