Expecting that home will be the way it was when you left? Are you instead shocked to discover that both you and home have changed? The Art of Coming Home offers the solid advice you need to reduce the stress of the transition experience.Veteran trainer, consultant and adventurer Craig Storti takes you step by step through the process of returning home after spending time abroad. He defines the four stages of reentry-leave taking, the honeymoon, reverse culture shock and readjustment-and what to expect at each phase, concluding with practical suggestions for successful repatriation. Understanding that reentry isn't just hard on the individual, Storti also examines reentry issues for spouses, teenagers, and young children. Storti offers both individuals and their children advice for dealing with reentry before and after departure from the overseas posting. Coming back home from spending time abroad can be almost as exciting as being away, and just as stressful. Prepare yourself for what's ahead with Craig Storti's The Art of Coming Home. A valuable resource for expatriates returning home, the families returning with them, their employers, and family and friends who want to understand and support their transition.-Donna Stringer, President, Executive Diversity ServicesContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1 Coming Home2 The Stages of Reentry3 The Return of the Employee4 The Return of Spouses and Children5 Special PopulationsEpilogueUseful ResourcesBibliographyIndex
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About the Author
Craig Storti is founder and co-director of Communicating Across Cultures, a Washington, D.C.-based intercultural communication training and consulting firm specializing in seminars on cross-cultural adjustment and repatriation. With work appearing in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, he is the author of six books, including Speaking of India: Bridging the Communication Gap When Working with Indians and the bestselling Cross-Cultural Dialogues, The Art of Crossing Cultures, and The Art of Coming Home. Having lived nearly a quarter of his life abroad, he lives now in Maryland. For more information, please visit his website: www.craigstorti.com
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Rolf Dobelli
Format:Paperback
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 youï¿ll 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 theyï¿re 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.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.5 out of 5 stars
8 reviews
47 of 47 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
A decent resource...
Aug 5 2000
By R. Peterson
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
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.
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rings true to my repatriation experience
Jun 19 2000
By A Customer
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
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."
65 of 79 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not a Complete Waste of Time, but...
Feb 29 2000
By David W. Allen
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
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?".
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