Author reflects on travel, religion and the gay identity

The cover to Andrew Evans’ memoir-travelogue The Black Penguin can almost be described as a cynical choice, a gaggle of cute penguins enticing readers into a tale of adventure to the end of the world. In an age of viral animal videos, who doesn’t want to read about those silly, proud aquatic birds?

And indeed, Evans delivers an adventure, though his approach is anything but cynical. After four travel guidebooks, The Black Penguin is Evans’ first foray into narrative writing, and an earnest one at that.

On assignment for National Geographic, Evans travelled more than 19,000 kilometres by bus from his Washington, D.C., home to South America’s southernmost tip before crossing by ship to Antarctica. Per his assignment, all of this was documented, in real time, on Twitter, but also in video, blog form and a printed feature.

“I had been riding buses since kindergarten — it is the simplest and most accessible form of public transportation that exists. If I could just keep connecting from one bus to the next, then eventually, I would reach the bottom of the world,” he writes.

Evans became a viral hit as National Geographic’s “Digital Nomad” writer — the author charts a parallel journey in his book, that of a Mormon man coming to terms with his religion and his identity, namely as a gay man.

From his early beginnings, riding (and being bullied on) a school bus in rural Ohio to riding a chicken bus through unpaved jungle roads among kind strangers, Twitter stalkers and clumsy cows, Evans charts his self-discovery with charm and sincerity, culminating in a run-in with the titular animal.

Ever the adventurer, Evans had just returned from a 600-km, 40-day overland hike on the newly minted Jordan Trail, from the city of Umm Qais to Aqaba on the Red Sea, when he talked by phone about his book, his life as a former Mormon, and childhood bullying. The interview is edited for space and clarity.

Q: At one point, you write: “I had never stayed at a gay hotel before, nor was I sure what makes one hotel gayer than the other. Besides the rainbow flag, the pretty, twink receptionist, and the disco ball in the lobby, the gayest thing about this hotel is that I wanted to stay there.” It seems like you’re trying to make a point.

A: I don’t think gay travel exists. I don’t think travel needs to be framed like that. I think “gay travel” can sometimes be shorthand for clubbing, where to hook up, that kind of stuff.

Q: And yet you explore your background as a gay man.

A: I didn’t set out to write a book about being gay — I’ve never considered myself a gay writer — but it’s the running theme of my life. When I started writing the book, it was just a travel story, but my agent at the time kept telling me it was missing a personal story. I shelved it for three years before picking it back up and starting all over again.

Internalized homophobia kept me from writing it at first. But as I wrote, the more I realized that, of course, travel is a path to self-discovery. I didn’t want to write a coming-out book, but travel helps you come to terms with who you are, which is why the book is structured the way it is today.

Q: You’ve written guidebooks to Iceland, Ukraine and others, but this is your first narrative book. What’s the reception been like?

A: I think we all live our lives thinking we’re the only people dealing with a particular issue or problem. I’ve met readers not in the same boat as me — not religious or gay — but they still connect with bullying, being ostracized. I thought I was being weak, recalling how difficult school was for me, but when I put it on the page, that’s what people have brought up — “yeah my kid is getting picked on at school,” or, “I was bullied too.” It’s universal.

Q: You took an ordinary idea — ride the bus — and made it an extraordinary adventure, and yet the story is so deeply about your upbringing in Ohio. As a former, deeply devout Mormon, you went from schoolyard taunts to excommunication from the church you loved, along with familial problems.

A: Everyone struggles with loving their family, fighting to be an individual, and to realize that everything your family is not who you are. My mother did not react well to my writing the book. It was to be expected — when you write a book like this, people aren’t just characters. The thing I hear all the time from other writers is “I want to write something like this, but I can’t because of my family.” I had to write as honest as I could, without any of that influence.

It’s the airing of personal things, the pain. It’s what happens. I ended up remembering a lot of stuff that I didn’t put in the book. I could’ve published a more damning book than I did — there were times people would tell me I was better off dead. These are not things you say to a young person suffering. Q: But seriously: Why a bus? A: While I began writing about the bus, I was a 34-year-old man who had a partner, now husband. I was out and happy. When I started writing about that journey to Antarctica, with broken lines down to the bottom of the map, rather than one simple flight, I realized life isn’t that neat.

From there, I drew connections to being bullied as a kid on the bus, and even then, National Geographic was a bright spot in my childhood when I was dealing with darkness and doubt. The bus becomes this vector for good and bad things — it’s always carrying us, and it was always there in my life. Buses are central to my past.

Q: So you don’t believe in gay travel, but does that inform your experience of the world, even a little?

A: I don’t want that to become my defining thing, to be a “gay writer.” I don’t want my career to be attached to my preference.

The world is very big, and I’ve been exploring it for decades — and yes, we do see the world from our experience. I see homophobia a certain way, but I also think when you’re gay, you seek out the other and the elsewhere because we all have to get out of our own worlds. The same can be said for a lot of people with wanderlust, the people flinging themselves around the world because it’s easier for them to connect with the kindness of other humans. I relate to that.