Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.

Emily Perper is a word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.

“One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things,” wrote Henry Miller. Travel changes the traveler, obviously. Here, authors look at themselves, their societies, and their conceptions of home.

1. “Fat and Happy: Living Body Positive in Indonesia.” (Emily Anderson, August 2013)

I’ve followed Anderson’s adventures as she’s navigated the weird waters of serving abroad and intersectional feminism. Here’s her latest, a beautiful, articulate exploration of how fat is treated in Indonesia.

2. “Last City I Loved: Abu Dhabi.” (April Xiong, The Rumpus, August 2013)

A dreamy meditation on travel and what makes a home. Xiong studies film in Abu Dhabi, but isn’t sure if she’ll ever belong there, or anywhere.

3. “On Seeing England for the First Time.” (Jamaica Kincaid, 1991)

“My nose was pressed up against a glass window all right, but there was an iron vise at the back of my neck forcing my head to stay in place.” Kincaid describes the problematic relationship between her Antiguan childhood and England’s colonization thereof.

4. “Nine Airports.” (Armin Rosen, August 2013)

Rosen documents his adventures in different—you guessed it—airports in Africa and the Middle East, from the eerie Somalian stopover to the grandiosity of Jordan.

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Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: 

For readers, summer travel offers a chance to discover a new bookstore or read a magazine you’ve never encountered before. This week’s College Longreads selection takes us to City Newsstand in Chicago, a magazine store that carries many titles you’ve heard of (The Economist) and several thousand you haven’t (RubberStampMadness). Nolan Feeney, a recent graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School, used City Newsstand as a backdrop for a bigger story about changes in the business of magazines. Feeney wrote this story for class last fall, and NewCity Lit, a digital supplement to the Chicago magazine, picked it up in the spring. Today, Feeney covers pop culture and Internet culture for Forbes.com.

Magazine Junkies: Print Thrives at City Newsstand

Nolan Feeney | NewCity Lit | March 2013 | 12 minutes (2,995 words)

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Professors and students: Share your favorite stories by tagging them with #college #longreads on Twitter, or email links to aileen@longreads.com.

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Paul Brady is an editor at Condé Nast Traveler.

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This isn’t a list of the best travel writing of the year, but if this is what travel writing could be every time, the genre wouldn’t have such a shaky reputation. I didn’t pick anything from Traveler because that would be lame.

Pass the Bucks (Steve Boggan, The Guardian, Dec. 11, 2010)

The story of following the same $10 around the country for 30 days could’ve been hokey, but Steve Boggan set aside his own quest to write about the characters he meets, their lives and the places they live.

All Amanda Can Jet (Tumblr)

This was the second year JetBlue released its All You Can Jet pass, spawning a mountain of mediocre tweets and poorly-managed trip-diary blogs. But Amanda Mae got it absolutely right—and the constantly updated “local beers consumed” metric was a nice touch.

My Country, My Train, My K-Hole (Hugh Ryan, The Morning News, June 30, 2010)

I’m a sucker for stories about trains, but this is on the next level: “The train is a liberating K-hole, a moment of suspended animation where it’s entirely acceptable to not answer phone calls … There are an endless number of things you can not do.”

No Country for Old Men? (Ed Vulliamy, The Guardian, Jan. 25, 2009)

This Ed Vulliamy article is from 2009, but the full-length book that grew out of it, Amexica, came out this year. Driving the entirety of the Mexican-American border, he writes a little bit about everything that makes it one of the most fascinating places on the planet: tattoo parlors, Christianity, narcoterrorism, “right-wing windbag talk radio,” and what sounds like the best La Quinta in Texas.

Boom (Sean Flynn, GQ, July 2010)

Probably the best story I read about the biggest story of the year, the oil spill, and while I probably can’t argue that it’s “travel writing,” it certainly evokes a particular place.

Bonus:

The Whistling Language of La Gomera

I have no idea when this was written, but I found it this year while researching… something. I forget. I like it because while we may spend 18 hours a day on the internet, there are still fascinating things to find out about like this utterly unique whistling language invented in and still used in the Canary Islands.

Julie Kliegman is a senior studying journalism and Spanish at Northwestern University. Come July, she’s headed to St. Petersburg to work for PolitiFact. She loves to travel, and has lived abroad for short stints in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico.

“This week I enjoyed reading ‘Owning the Middle,’ an ESPN story about WNBA star Brittney Griner. If their sleek online feature design (see: 'Out in the Great Alone’) isn’t enough to woo you, Kate Fagan paints a compelling picture of life as a black, lesbian athlete. Griner developed a thick skin during childhood and her time at Baylor that now helps her deflect the bullies Fagan refers to as her 'troll chorus.’ Reading this will make you want to be as badass as Griner—the proud owner of many tattoos and two snakes.”

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