Editor’s Corner
August 21, 2009
Bringing It All Back Home
By
Andrea Pitzer
Foreign correspondence has unique challenges—in addition to getting the story, reporters have to act as anthropologists, providing context and interpreting for readers who might miss significant cues. But when a foreign reporter becomes part of the story (intentionally or not), narrative complications ensue. The good news? Sometimes complicated works.
In the latest Notable Narrative, “Escape from North Korea,” defectors wait at a train station in China for their handler to call. They loiter and linger, while soldiers patrol the area. National Geographic reporter Tom O’Neill, who traveled under false papers on the same train for 2,000 miles, had intended to cover the defectors’ flight at a distance. But he worries that they will be caught by police and surrendered to North Korea, where they would probably end up in labor camps. So, O’Neill steps in, and he and his wife (who is also his translator) take the defectors to a hotel room until they get the call from the smuggler who will take them across the border into Laos.
By risking his own safety, O’Neill communicates his anxiety about the danger faced by his subjects. And paradoxically, watching a reporter enter the story does not create a distraction. Instead, it draws readers looking over his shoulder a little further in.
Reporter Neil Shea takes a more deliberate approach to the first person in “The Revolution Is” from Virginia Quarterly Review. In this account of rural Cuba 50 years after the revolution, Shea introduces information he heard about the island nation growing up. He contrasts the ignorance and vague enmity with which he was taught to view Cuba with his reception there, where locals feed him, give him a bed for the night, and spin stories of what the revolution has meant for them. The entire story becomes a voyage of discovery in which Shea stands in for those who cannot legally visit the island.
Then there are narratives in which the power and immediacy of the first person run the risk of overwhelming the larger story. Iason Athanasiadis faces this challenge in “From the Inside,” which ran in The National.
Of British and Greek descent, Athanasiadis sits in Tehran's Evin Prison while the street protests he came to Iran to cover continue outside. He catches the reader’s attention by opening with his prison interrogation and a disturbing reference to what must have been an up-close view of a “golden filling” in his interrogator’s mouth. He then spirals backward to take in his years of study in Iran, national history reaching back to 1925, and his pre-election visits with Tehran’s locals.
Athanasiadis keeps the focus on the larger issue of the public response to the elections. But he uses the drama of incarceration to analyze his interrogator and explain what role the man and his allies play in Iranian society. Judicious use of his dramatic personal story effectively spotlights the events he intended to cover in the first place.
First-person foreign reportage—especially in countries that do not welcome unfettered coverage—has risks beyond detention or arrest. Cultural clues are more easily misinterpreted, dependence upon translators can hobble an authoritative voice, and additional background work is necessary to provide crucial context. However, inserting “I” into the story can also be one of the quickest ways to bring readers into a world far removed from their own but perhaps not impossible to understand after all.
[For more on the challenges of overseas reporting, read our interview with Tom O'Neill.]