Description:
People often grow increasingly culturally confused when spending significant amounts of time in a foreign land. Identity can become lost only to reform in the image of the host society. This thesis presents a creative nonfiction series of essays that explore the author’s loss of self and contextual identity, the reshaping of that identity, and the destruction of the new identity. The theme of identity is explored, sometimes violently and sometimes comically, through interactions with tourists and natives; local, national,
and global politics; ethnic food; journeying through a sandstorm; crime in a medina; the veneer of religion; and visibility and invisibility within a society.