Customer Reviews

The Art of Coming Home

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Of no surprise to anyone who has lived overseas and then attempted a successful 're-entry', coming home is tremendously more stressful and difficult than leaving home. Storti directs a company that designs and delivers seminars in cross-cultural adjustment, repatriation and multicultural diversity. Most striking about this book was how complex the issues are surrounding the re-entry of a family or person into a society and culture that no longer feels like his/her own. One of the most remarkable results of living overseas is that you come to understand your own culture much better and more clearly then those at home who are 'in' it. We experience this when we come home even for brief periods - the US is so enveloped in its high-consumerism that an outsider has difficulty finding value in the every day. While Americans have learned to absorb the 1000 cable channels, and 800 varieties of dog foods in the supermarket aisles, expatriates find it highly stressful to come back to a country where abundance, waste, and intense material comforts are the norm (after they've lived in places where all of these things are harder to find and they've adjusted thusly). Storti is also careful to speak to the frustrations that the homebound friends and family experience when their loved ones decend upon them after what they see as tremendous opportunities for cultural and personal growth. I found this book a very good resource and will likely pick it up again every time I am heading home - for a new series of stresses - to help remember why these stresses exist and how to soften them.

This book captured and helped make sense of the unsettling experiences my wife and I had in returning to the US after four years living and working in England. I think the best time to read it might be before you leave, but I only found it after returning (and hearing the author speak to a group of repatriates).

The book includes good practical insights and suggestions for employees, employers and co-workers, spouses, families, and teens/kids experiencing what the book calls "reverse culture shock."

I went into this book expecting a feast. Instead, I got table scraps.

While this is by no means an awful book, it is unbalanced and doesn't address the issues a large population of returnees face. Let me cite some examples: In my opinion, Storti spends too much time addressing the problems of corporate "organization people" who are sent overseas by the multinational corporations they work for. Poor Mr & Mrs Smith (and their children) had to endure all the corporate perks overseas; more autonomy, compensation, free accomodation, servants, etc. Then they have to come home to less power and prestige, no servants, and they have to pay off the luxury apartment. To top it off, no one understands them. My heart bleeds, as you can probably tell.

When Storti gets around to those less fortunate expatriates - Peace Corps Volunteers, Missionaries, Military Personnel - three quarters of the book is finished and you're wondering if the author has met any returnees in the last 20 years (since he started coordinating corporate "Repatriation Seminars") who are not managerial material.

The fact is that most people who go overseas are not corporate types. They go with a prearranged job or study plan and return, jobless, on their volition. They are students, English - and other subject - teachers, and aid/NGO workers who generally don't pull down the cash that Storti's seminar members do. In the end, what left me unsatisfied was the lack of balance and covert classism of this book.

To the book's credit, however, the author does provide some good advice for repatriation which I hope to use in a few months. For this reason, I am glad that people like Craig Storti are out there. However, there is not enough of this to go around. In the end, you wonder, like the old lady on American TV said, "Where's the beef?".

If you spent months in Paraguay or Latvia longing for modern supermarkets, octo-plex movie theaters and mega-malls, coming home will surprise you. All that consumerism, all those different breakfast cereals, all that plenty and pizzazz may not play as well with you as you had remembered. Never mind. Eventually youll again expect to be offered 15 different kinds of herbal tea with your $18 lunch, but when you first return and the deprivations of your overseas station are still fresh, reentry can include a big shot of culture shock. Companies pay plenty of attention to executives and workers who need help and advice when theyre given an overseas assignment. But Craig Storti thought it was time to address the needs of those same expats when they return and face the challenge of readjustment. He does so expertly in this practical guide, which includes hard logistics and some soft psychology. We from getAbstract highly recommend this book to homecoming expats and to those who play crucial roles in managing their reentries.

The Art of Coming Home is an excellent introduction to a little known or understood concept: reverse culture shock. When a loved one suffers and you strive to learn how to help, a book like this is invaluable and makes all the difference in understanding the problem and implementing a solution. The author thoroughly describes the phenomenon and carefully guides the reader toward a compassionate understanding and positive choices to support that loved in "coming home". Interestingly, my work often involves dealing with people whose lives are affected by what has been termed "institutionalization" - which I learned from this book is yet another form of culture shock. So, this book has helped me on both a personal and professional level. I highly recommend it. Ted

This book killed all of our excitement about coming home and offers no usefool tools or resources. The author states the obvious and basically drones on on an about how horrible it is to come home. If you want to be depressed then buy this book. Poor writting, no content, and not as exciting and essential as it claims to be. It's a big NO NO!

Craig Storti has made an important contribution to both people going to work in another culture and those returning to their home culture.