Confrontations in the New World: Grete Weil's Happy, sagte der Onkel (1968)

Laureen Nussbaum

doi:10.15173/sj.v3i1.2681

Abstract

In her essay “Travel Writing and Gender,” the British scholar Susan Bassnett makes two points that are relevant in analyzing Grete Weil’s travel tales, Happy, sagte der Onkel (Happy, Said My Uncle). Bassnett remarks that “increasingly in the twentieth century, male and female travelers have written self-reflexive texts that defy easy categorization as autobiography, memoir, or travel account.” This observation certainly holds true for Grete Weil’s slim volume, and so does Bassnett’s gender-specific assertion that there is a “strand of women’s travel writing that has grown in importance in the twentieth century: the journey that leads to greater self-awareness and takes the reader simultaneously on that journey.

Highlights

Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/wll_fac Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons
In her essay "Travel Writing and Gender," the British scholar Susan Bassnett makes two points that are relevant in analyzing greater self-awareness. Margarete (Grete) Weil's travel tales, Happy, sagte der Onkel (Happy, Said My Uncle).[1]
Bassnett remarks that "increasingly in the twentieth century, male and female travelers have written self-reflexive texts that defy easy categorization as autobiography, memoir, or travel account."[2] This observation certainly hold true for Grete Weil's slim volume, and so does Bassnett's gender-specific assertion that there is a "strand of women's travel writing that has grown in importance in the twentieth century: the journey that leads to greater self-awareness and takes the reader simultaneously on that journey."[3] The three stories told in Happy, sagte der Onkel are based on the author's first trip to the New World, but go beyond mere travel accounts

Summary

Introduction

Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/wll_fac Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons. Confrontations in the New World: Grete Weil's Happy, sagte der Onkel (1968).

Results

Conclusion