Luggage

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. You can't think about travel without thinking about luggage. And baggage has baggage. Susan Harlan takes readers on a journey with the suitcases that support, accessorize, and accompany our lives. Along the way, she shows how the materials of travel - the carry-ons, totes, trunks, and train cases of the past and present - have stories to tell about displacement, home, gender, class, consumption, and labor. Luggage considers bags as carefully curated microcosms of our domestic and professional selves, charting the evolution of travel across literature, film, and art. A simple suitcase, it turns out, contains more than you might think. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

"I moved to USA from Poland. I was 22 years old then. I thought it will be so amazing, just like I always thought my life would be. My dream of going to the incredible paradise that USA stands for many, was coming true. So happy, so excited, so fearless. Soon, my "color glasses" felt off and the real, very brutal life has started. Life to survive! My life went from wealthy to poor; from having lots of friends to feeling alone and forgotten; from not worried about food to that excruciating pain in my stomach caused by hunger. Never thought I will have to worry about being homeless but my destiny had different plans for me. I went from being loved, cared to that pain of being abused physically, broken down mentally. I learned the definition of true, deep, incredible love filled with passion, butterflies, happiness. I had the privilege to experience the pain of a broken heart; where my soul had been ripped out of me without any warnings. I went from somebody to nobody, from being smart collage girl to confused, lost little child. Luck of English knowledge, total culture shock and pure fear have welcomed me at the airport, where emotional roller coaster has become my every day companion. My road of life has been very hard, filled with rocks but I am still heading forward, dragging my luggage behind. Luggage filled with my life, life of a Polish immigrant." www.facebook.com/taneyalyn

A single, unique document - a list of one merchant's baggage - is the starting point used to bring to life the twelfth-century Indian Ocean. Drawing connections between material culture, foodstuffs and the construction of identity, Lambourn examines notions of home and mobility at a key moment in world history.

Stumbling upon some luggage that has been left behind in the hotel where he works, a waiter searches through it to identify its owner. He fails to discover this, but he does find, secreted away in different parts of the luggage, quite a number of stories. Impressed by their quality, he succeeds in getting them published, although the identity of their author remains a mystery until a visitor comes calling.

3 historier.