12. Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman

A map of the world on an IHOP placemat leads two young women on a frightening trip in Gilman’s latest memoir. In 1986, Susan Jane Gilman has just graduated from college and doesn’t know what to do with her life. One night, she and a distant friend, Claire, are drunkenly talking about traveling around the world once they see the placemat. They decide to start their world-wide journey in China, which has just opened up to tourists. Little do they know the drama that awaits them.

Once in China, Susan quickly realizes that the two are in over their heads. What starts off as an innocent rite of passage quickly deteriorates into an ultimately scary attempt to get out of the country. The women are confused as to where they are going, travel is hindered by delayed transportation, they are constantly hungry, and they are monitored at all times because they look so different from everyone else. Susan also realizes that she doesn’t know Claire as well as she should have probably known her before she agreed to travel around the world with her – as the trip progresses Claire becomes more and more paranoid, sick, and mentally ill. When she jumps off a bridge in a possible suicide attempt and the military police get involved, Susan realizes that she must quickly get Claire back to the United States.

Gilman does an excellent job in portraying the claustrophobic feeling of being on a doomed trip, trapped in a foreign country with a person she doesn’t know very well that clearly needs medical and psychiatric help. Even though her world-wide trip was cut short and most would agree was disastrous, Gilman surprises everyone, including herself, by traveling again shortly after she comes back to the U.S. Part travel memoir, part cautionary tale, this personal account of a trip gone wrong is ultimately uplifting.