Under the Tuscan Sun

Classic travel memoirs, such as Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1955), Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods (1998), or Robyn Davidson’s Tracks (1980), are defined by restless journeys and encounters with the unfamiliar. Although Under the Tuscan Sun is firmly rooted in one place, Mayes adheres to many of the conventions of the travel memoir genre, establishing her memoir’s place in the genre. Mayes’s narrative echoes the thematic concerns of travel memoirs with its focus on the rediscovery of self and the search for home and belonging. She also hews closely to the stylistic conventions of the genre with a first-person point of view and highly descriptive sensory imagery, placing the reader within her experience and developing an immersive three-dimensional portrait of the people, culture, and environment of Tuscany. With these thematic and stylistic choices, she enters into conversation with contemporary travel memoirs like Wild (2012) by Cheryl Strayed, as well as more classic examples of the genre, like John Steinbeck’s classic