Identity and Transformation in Enid Shomer's Tourist Season

In Tourist Season, Enid Shomer presents identity not as a stable core but as a fluid construct constantly reshaped by circumstance, desire, and crisis. Her characters shed old selves through spiritual calling, deception, criminality, or physical metamorphosis, yet the results are seldom purely liberating. Transformation in this collection often demands a painful reckoning with the past, and the new self may be as haunted as the one left behind. This analysis traces the theme across three key stories and explores the symbols that embody these changes, before considering the story "Laws of Nature" as a radical counterpoint.

Iris Hornstein: Reincarnation as Reinvention

In "Chosen," Miami speech therapist Iris Hornstein is visited by two Tibetan monks who declare her the reincarnation of Saint Amar-jampa. Her initial skepticism gives way to reluctant participation: she travels to Tibet with her husband, undergoes months of instruction through books and sounds, and eventually meets the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. Her transformation is neither instant nor mystical. Instead, she becomes a "bridge between cultures" through discipline and absorption, walking a treadmill while studying illustrated texts and listening to natural sounds. The process uproots her professional identity but also grafts a new spiritual role onto her existing self. She even resumes work with a stuttering child upon returning to Florida, suggesting that transformation need not erase the past. The symbol Polaroid photographs appears elsewhere in the collection as a tool for capturing identity, but here the monks’ deliberate pedagogy—forcing Iris to absorb all sensory input—replaces the snapshot with a slow, deliberate exposure to a new existence. Iris becomes a "sponge" for the world, her identity expanded rather than replaced.

Sheila: The Weight of a Hidden Identity

"The Other Mother" follows Sheila, a woman on the run after learning that her ex-husband Win kidnapped their adopted daughter Royal. The adoption was a crime, and Sheila must now live a lie to protect her daughter. Her transformation is driven by guilt and secrecy: she moves between cheap accommodations, works at Dillard’s, and torments herself with the secret. Unlike Iris’s spiritually sanctioned change, Sheila’s reinvention is coerced and corrosive. The story’s title itself signals a dual identity: she is both mother and impostor. The symbol of fire—which appears in other stories as destruction or purging—here burns indirectly as the weight of the secret that consumes her from within. Sheila contemplates returning to Mobile to safeguard Royal, understanding that her life "must become a lie." Her identity is not chosen but imposed, making transformation a burden rather than a release.

Garland McKenney: Rebellion and the Search for Self

Garland McKenney appears in "Fill In the Blank" and "Sweethearts," a young woman hungry for risk. In "Fill In the Blank," she orchestrates a robbery of a physical-therapy office with her roommate Linda. The crime fractures their friendship and exposes Garland’s inability to feel genuine remorse. For Garland, rule-breaking is both a destination and a "tap on the gas pedal"—a way to feel alive. Her mandated therapy forces her to confront a personality test’s final question about what makes a good life, but she cannot imagine a loving family or a satisfying job. Her transformation is stunted: she cycles through rebellion without arriving at a coherent new self. The pager number 666 (from "Crash Course") symbolizes the demonization of the other, but for Garland the symbol of her own alienation is the Polaroid photograph as an attempt to fix a moment of identity; she remains stuck in a "waking dream" of a car careening along a mountain road. The chapter "Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion" directly asks what might prevent her future crimes, highlighting the inconclusiveness of her transformation.

Complexity and Contradiction: The Magic of "Laws of Nature"

The thematic claim that identity is fluid reaches its literal extreme in "Laws of Nature." Helen, an aging anthropologist, begins to grow younger overnight. Her family is appalled; her doctor recommends a psychiatrist. But the housekeeper Benita reveals that in her Mexican village, older women often transform into animals—usually pigs or wolves—and roam the countryside. Helen’s change is both organic and magical, defying medical explanation. This story interrogates the boundary between metaphor and reality. Is Helen actually becoming younger, or is the story a fable about aging? The ambiguity forces readers to question whether transformation must be believable to be meaningful. The symbol of the wolf tail (referenced in the collection’s symbolic landscape) ties Helen’s change to the primal, animalistic rebirth that Benita describes. Yet Helen’s joy—"She felt like sprinting down the beach"—contrasts sharply with the guilt of Sheila and the confusion of Garland. Transformation here is celebratory, but socially isolating. The collection thus presents a spectrum: from the spiritual (Iris) to the secretive (Sheila) to the rebellious (Garland) to the miraculous (Helen), each carrying its own costs.

Study Questions

1. How does Iris’s transformation in "Chosen" differ from Sheila’s in "The Other Mother" in terms of agency and outcome?
   Answer: Iris chooses to accept her role as reincarnated saint after initial skepticism, and her transformation allows her to integrate her old life (speech therapy) with her new identity. Sheila’s transformation is forced by the discovery of her daughter’s kidnapping; she must live a lie to protect Royal, and her identity becomes a burden of guilt rather than liberation.

2. What role does the Polaroid photograph play in the collection’s exploration of identity?
   Answer: The Polaroid appears in the title story as a way for Irv to capture moments and perhaps find himself in the images. It represents the desire to fix identity in a single frame, yet the characters’ transformations are ongoing and cannot be contained by a snapshot.

3. Garland’s counselor asks what makes a good life. Why is Garland unable to answer this question, and what does that reveal about her identity?
   Answer: Garland has never experienced a loving family or satisfying work; her only sense of self comes from risk and rule-breaking. The question forces her to confront an absence, revealing that her identity is defined more by what she lacks than by what she possesses.

4. In "Laws of Nature," do you read Helen’s change as literal or metaphorical? How does the story’s ambiguity affect the theme of transformation?
   Answer: The story deliberately blurs the line. The doctor’s skepticism and Benita’s magical realism create two competing interpretations. This ambiguity suggests that transformation can be both real and symbolic, depending on the lens through which we view identity—and that the power of change may lie as much in perception as in biology.

5. How does the symbol of fire connect to identity in the stories featuring Garland and Sheila?
   Answer: Garland commits arson as part of her rule-breaking, using fire as a destructive act that temporarily defines her. For Sheila, fire appears only indirectly as the heat of her secret—she fears being consumed by the truth. In both cases, fire represents a transformation through destruction, but Garland seeks it while Sheila flees it.