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The abortion road trip is a narrative device that has emerged in the last decade whereby the central plot of the story is the journey taken in search of an abortion. In this paper we analyze two young adult novels (Girls on the Verge and Unpregnant) and two films (Grandma and Never Rarely Sometimes Always) that follow adolescent girls traveling for abortions in the contemporary United States. Through the analysis of these four narratives, we argue that representations of the abortion road trip are novel for their focus on the barriers and politics of abortion access in the United States. While the representations do prioritize certain barriers over others, they mark an important shift in abortion discourse in popular culture. Instead of the 'drama' of the plot being the decision to have an abortion, it is increasingly other socio-politico-legal issues such as the lack of abortion clinics, the distance required to travel, legal rights for adolescents, the cost of the procedure, and the opinions of family and friends that take center stage. The focus on these structural, political barriers can help to educate audiences about the realities of abortion access in the US and move abortion discourse beyond the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about my long friendship with Luis "Rambo" Ortega, and more specifically tells the story of our road trip in 2004, from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to his hometown of Celaya in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. It speaks generally about the nature of our friendship, but also recounts several amusing events that took place along the way. The first deals with our semi-legal border crossing adventures. There is some description of us on the road. Finally, there is the reaction of Luis's family when they realize that his friend (me) is gay. Este articlulo trata sobre mi larga amistad con Luis "Rambo" Ortega, y más específicamente cuenta la historia de nuestro viaje desde Chapel Hill, North Carolina a Celaya en el estado de Guanajuato, México en 2004. Cuenta la historia de nuestra amistad y también cuenta de varios eventos divertidos en el camino. Uno habla de nuestra entrada semiilegal a la frontera. Hay historias de viaje. Finalmente, hay la reacción de la familia de Luis cuando se dan cuenta de que su amigo (yo) es gay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thebes Troutman in Miriam Toews's The Flying Troutmans (2008) is a quirky eleven-year-old Canadian tween. In this article I argue that Thebes's body, skin and movement offer a textual counterpoint to the rigidity of the story of the nuclear family as it is conventionally told. Aligning the deterritorialization of the family with that of the nation, I argue that Thebes's marking of her body in an engagingly bizarre tween performance proclaims her separation from the conventional family road trip and story, promoting new iterations of family, home, belonging and origins. It is Thebes as tween who, through creating a zany, sometimes disturbing, but articulate identity and culture on her own skin, raises new possibilities of the tween's role in breaking down borders. Thebes Troutman as a twenty-first-century fictional tween carves out space for new directions and a more fluid Canadian family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to test a model linking destination image, perceived value, tourist satisfaction, and tourist loyalty. Based on a sample of 300 tourists travelling by car from theWorld Natural Heritage Site of Tianchi, China, a new model of destination image was explored and data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The results show that perceived value and satisfaction are direct antecedents of destination loyalty. Above all, perceived value and tourist satisfaction mediate the relationship between destination image and loyalty. Finally, this study discusses the theoretical and management implications of the findings in order to boost the tourism industry in the context of car trips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following photo/text work is an extract from a much larger installation of photographs and text. The photographs have a modified generic quality: colour landscapes and self-portraits in tourist sites across America, the images similar to postcards or amateur tourist/family photographs. The stories, by contrast, are grounded in an individual specificity of response to the sites and events of the trip to function as allegorical anecdotes. The work conjoins a personal, lesbian and poetic narrative with familiar and potentially mundane images. The format of the tourist plaque is an appropriation of the trope of `official' authority that uses such markers to direct and define what is currently and historically significant. The work explores questions of: the ambiguity of identity through association, lesbian invisibility, cross gender play, homo/lesbo eroticism, women's access to and ownership of public space, the imaginary of the `road trip,' landscape in photography, the documentary function of photography, photographic history, heterosexual assumption, etc. The work constructs a lesbian cognitive map of space, place, memory and history. The work (initially) appears simple in presenting familiar imagery with personal stories that explore theoretical ideas of lesbian subjecthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]