Wait, are our arts degrees still actually useful?

On problematic words in travel writing, family history and holidays

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Isn’t it nice to know that our airy-fairy, liberal arts degrees can still come in handy in our work decades later?

Just yesterday I stumbled across an article which suggested that the term ‘Moorish’ was now considered fairly problematic, even a touch racist?

I’d been editing and updating an old article about southern Spain, you see, and the original writer had used the word in the piece’s intro.

So I ran it past a few fellow travel writers on Twitter as I am wont to do (and no, I’m still not calling it X) and one told me that she always bypasses it, using things like ‘North African-inspired’ or ‘Moroccan-influenced instead.’

She made the good point that it was used in a derogatory way in Othello. Something she’d learned from her literature degree studies.

Another writer then piped up with the info that it’s technically classed as an exonym, which according to the OED is ‘a name for a place or group of people that is only used outside that place or group.’

Well I never! I confess that I didn’t even know what an exonym was before that exchange.

A cursory Google uncovered a brief, but illuminating, article from National Geographic about the Moors.

This piece dug into the history of the term and its use:

‘Beginning in the Renaissance, Moor and blackamoor were also used to describe any person with dark skin…By then, the idea of Moors had spread across Western Europe. Moor came to mean anyone who was Muslim or had dark skin.’

When writing about travel these days, especially when covering places, people and cultures outside of the ‘western world’, it’s becoming increasingly important to avoid ‘othering’ and sundry colonialist tropes.

This is a topic covered very well, and in far more detail than I could possibly muster, by Meera Dattani, a Senior Editor at Adventure.com. She’s also a former Chair of the British Guild of Travel Writers and ran several webinars on this very subject, so naturally she’s a highly reliable and respected source.

There are obvious challenges associated with writing about foreign places. Maybe even the very word ‘foreign’ carries some negative associations these days?

Well yet another writer waded into the debate saying that she felt ‘foreign’ was fine, but perhaps ‘alien when describing a foreigner or immigrant’ was really not?

It just goes to show that it’s always worth casting around for opinions from other intelligent, enlightened professionals. Let’s be honest, getting this stuff right can be something of a minefield, and equally there’s a danger that we tie ourselves up in knots trying to walk this particular line with utmost care and sensitivity. But that’s a whole other, ongoing debate best left for another day perhaps.

I then happened upon another article (buggered if I can find it now of course) in Forbes which suggested that terms like ‘explore’ and ‘discover’ were similarly outdated. Now I’m not sure I’d go that far personally, and frankly I’d be a little stumped without those stalwarts in my armoury, but still it was food for thought.

Ultimately we can only experience the wider world through our own eyes of course, but it’s important to be mindful of other perspectives, swerve clichés and maintain an inclusive approach wherever possible. You might even go as far as saying that it’s our duty to do so, as responsible travel writers, or human beings even?

A good editor should always be mindful of such things and weed out problematic word use where necessary.

Plus it just goes to show that learning never stops, especially when writing professionally about people and places.

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My own formal education is long behind me now. I studied English and American Literature with Drama and Theatre Studies at Kent University, way back in the 90s.

I somehow managed to bypass Shakespeare altogether though, making the most of modular options covering subjects as broad as linguistics, philosophy and history of art.

Back then I never dreamed I would get paid to travel and write about places of course, far-flung or otherwise.

In fact at that age I hadn’t travelled any further than Cornwall. Lands’ End took on a special, symbolic, almost literal, significance. See also Lizard Point. And don’t you just love the accidental poetry of place-names?

So anyway our annual family holidays generally entailed a long, slow taxi ride from suburban Bromley, followed by a long train journey west from London Paddington.

Even that station seemed impossibly glamorous and exotic back then. (Note to self, ‘exotic’ is another word for the naughty list. But sod it, I’m just going with it here, cos that is how it felt to me as a kid.)

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A high point of the journey would be unwrapping our tin foil-wrapped sandwiches, usually somewhere west of Reading. As a moody teenager, I probably spent most of the journey with my nose buried in the inky pages of the NME or Melody Maker.

How different would that journey experience be today though? I haven’t been back to Cornwall for decades, as I have been so eager to see other parts of our planet.

And I don’t think I have a single photo of those journeys or stations. I highly doubt any were actually taken. It was the pre-smartphone era after all.

Today I would probably busy myself by taking videos of it to share on TikTok, threads and Instagram.

Hopefully I’d still find time to gaze out of the window though, while the undulating, green scenery rattles gently past.

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Let’s go back in time again now. Dad didn’t get a passport until well into midlife you see, for various complex reasons relating to his nationality.

He was an Italian emigrant who had washed up in Blighty after World War Two and swiftly set about anglicising himself. This was necessary back then, especially when you came from a country still identified as ‘the enemy’ on the losing side of the war.

You’d scarcely know he was Italian though. He spoke in an accent located somewhere between classic BBC RP and a south east London variant of Cockney. Only when he got a bit excited would a trace of his Italian accent surface.

Yet he was fiercely proud of his Italian heritage and culture, despite being cast largely adrift from it for most of his adult life. Often to a frankly ridiculous extent. For instance, he would always complain about the racist bias made by football commentators commentating on any teams from ‘Latin countries’, not just Italy.

There he would sit in his faded, brown leather armchair, shouting away at the telly, gesticulating wildly, screaming ‘Forza Italia!’ at whoever was driving the Ferrari on the Formula One circuit, regardless of their actual nationality.

Our frequent visits to Italian restaurants were the worst. Much to my embarrassment, he’d always insist on launching into a bit of Italian patter with the waiting staff and even ordering in Italian, completely oblivious to the fact that they clearly hailed from London, Spain or even Poland for that matter.

Still, it was understandable I guess. He was very much a lost soul, cut adrift from his roots. He grew up, in both Rome and London, under the auspices of a very strict, domineering Catholic mother who would take eight tenths of his salary and slap his face for daring to take a girl out at the age of 21.

He never knew his real dad either. A war baby suddenly transplanted to a cold, foreign land, aged nine, left with little but reminiscences about the fig trees growing in the garden of his childhood home in Rome.

He had very little contact with his mother after finally cutting the apron strings and marrying mum. He had even less to do with his stepbrother, having not maintained much contact until his later years and knew no living relatives back home in Italy.

He spent countless years searching of course, but records were scant back then. All he knew was that his mother was born in Sardinia. His father, who had another family somewhere, supposedly came from Rome.

I’ve been to Rome a few times myself, just flying visits, and a graphic poster graces my wall today, in tribute to dad. One day I will hopefully return and visit the places he used to talk about so fondly. I may even plant a tree there. Centocelle. Fiumicino. And we’re back to the poetry of place names once again…

So yes, Dad was fiercely protective of his dislocated Italian identity. My nan on my mother’s side once called him ‘a good south London boy.’ He didn’t speak to her for months.

He was adopted by his English stepfather, who swiftly moved the family to south London after the war, hence why I have such a boring English name.

Otherwise I would be Jools Piloni today, my paternal grandmother’s maiden name. Or possibly Jools Preti, the name of my actual paternal grandfather. Not that I ever met either of them of course.

Mind you, if I adopted my maternal grandfather’s name (yes, mum was also a war baby who never knew her real father) I would be Jools Tylershevsky, which is even cooler!

Anyway, where was I? That old addled bipolar brain of mine does like its tangents eh?

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Ah yes, family holidays, that’s right. Of course all this cultural exclusion didn’t stop dad travelling to Italy in later life. He took Mum there a handful of times, including one trip where they saw in the Millennium and another spent cheering on Italy in the football World Cup held on home turf.

But all this is to say that my parents were never able to take me abroad as a kid. So we holidayed at home, long before seemingly every other article in the travel press was banging on about ‘staycations.’ And that entailed longish train journeys to the West Country. Mainly Cornwall or Devon.

So a love of train travel is now deeply ingrained in my psyche, something for which I am very thankful.

Photo by Piotr Guzik on Unsplash

Nowadays my soul forever yearns to be sitting on a train somewhere warmer than Blighty, idly gazing out the window while doing my best (and probably failing miserably) to snap the passing landscape, being gently lulled to sleep by the steady, clacking of the rails, or nursing a G ‘n’ T outside a friendly station bar perhaps.

I’ve made a portion of my freelance living through writing and generating accessible but quirky content about train travel after all and arguably it helped launch my second career writing about travel in general.

So what’s my big, closing point here, you may well be wondering by now? Well the truth is I don’t really have one, but hey, this is my very first post here so go easy on me please!

Except never stop learning, discovering, keeping an open mind, challenging your hard-won preconceptions, especially as you get older. And that includes language of course, because words do matter.

Everything in life is connected after all: work, home, family, travel, thinking, writing, social media, dreaming etc. At least that’s how I see it.

But more than anything it’s that constant urge for connection that powers me and drives nearly everything I do in life, including travel of course.

There, will that do?