While the Oxford English Dictionary defines expatriate as “living in a foreign country esp. by choice” and several of our readings have suggested that expatriate is a more romantic version of travel, the fact is that being an expatriate has become something of a political chance. For this project, I will be defining expatriate (and particularly artistic expatriates) as someone who leaves their homes country by choice without imminent threat.

To begin with the basics, expatriate means one who lives in a country other than their birth country most typically by choice. Historically, the phrase seems to be romanticized by both those who see expatriates and expatriates themselves. For instance, Hemingway's A Moveable Feast is a work built off the experiences of the creative expatriates that made up the “rag-tag” group of artists that Hemingway found himself in league with while he worked in Paris, far from his home in America. Though it does address the issues of being a poor artist, most of the struggles of the novel are painted in light of profession, rather than displacement, while many of the achievements and beauties of the novel are centered around place and circumstance. Indeed, this seems to be the picture painted of the expatriate by scholars, historically. As Said pointed out in Reflections on Exile “expatriates may share in the solitude and estrangement of exile but they do not suffer under its rigid proscriptions” (Said, 181). He uses Hemingway and Fitzgerald as examples. Then, he goes on to suggest that, alternatively, “artists in exile are decidedly unpleasant” and that “James Joyce chose to be in exile: to give force to his artistic vocation” (Said, 182). As the only section in his essay that discusses choice, Said seems to focus most of it on artistic--particularly literary--figures, thus drawing a connection between travel of choice and romantic art.

In Brooklyn Heights, Hend leaves her home with her son to come to Brooklyn in 2008. She selects an area of town that is known for its artistic residents. While there, she never actually writes but she paints a beautiful narrative of memory and present in her own mind. In A Border Passage, Leila Ahmed narrates her travel from Cairo to England to Cairo to England to the United States, constantly in search of more opportunity for her education and herself.