I enjoy travel memoirs but most of the classic are written by men (usually white British or American guys). I’d like to read something from a different perspective. But a lot of memoirs by woman travelers are seemingly obsessed with discovering what it is to be a woman traveling rather than discussing the experience. Perhaps that’s sometimes just marketing? And if so I’m happy to explore a book that’s been super marketed for one thing but is about much more! What I like about classic travel memoirs (like Bruce Chatwin, Edward Abbey, etc) is that a place or a voyage ends up allowing the traveler to understand themselves, the human experience, some specific topic in more detail. The travel opens up their creative and intellectual perspective. I’d love to listen to that kind of thought process from a woman.
by Janetgoesplaces
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freya stark is the grande dame of female travellers. more recent(she died last year aged 90), look into Dervla Murphy, an Irish woman who rode her bike solo from Ireland to India. among other trips.
Jan Morris is another canonical name in travel writing, but some of her work may still be under her dead name of James. She was the reporter who broke the news of Tenzing and Hillary reaching the summit of Everest.
If you want classic, I would say Ella K. Maillart: The Cruel Way; Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, from 1939. It was published recently.
And then there’s Gertrude Bell: The Desert and the Sown: Travels in Palestine and Syria