Hello, Stranger by Will Buckingham review – how we find connection in a disconnected world
F or many of us – particularly those of us fortunate enough to not lose family members – one of the deeper losses we have suffered during the pandemic has been being cut off from people who we were not close to. I long for the sociable buzz of academic conferences, for the chats in coffee breaks with people I see once in a blue moon.
In Hello, Stranger Will Buckingham, a peripatetic academic and author, offers an elegant and often moving exploration of what it means to connect with strangers. His starting point is one of grief. The death of his own wife, Elee, from cancer, haunts his book. While he needed the comfort of friends in the aftermath, he recounts: “I was surprised by the extent to which I also needed strangers – people who knew nothing of Elee, who knew nothing of the particularities of my grief.”
It has been sobering to realise how much we gain from the proximity of people whom we do not love but from whose presence we still draw comfort and stimulation
Even before his wife’s death, much of Buckingham’s life had been spent among strangers. Growing up, his father’s vicarage was something of an open house to congregants and assorted waifs and strays. As an adult he has travelled widely and spent extended periods working, exploring and learning in Indonesia, China, Myanmar and elsewhere. Indeed, even after his wife’s diagnosis he still went off to teach in Chengdu, returning only when it became clear the illness had entered its terminal phase.
Hello, Stranger is rooted in a long tradition of thinking about what it means to live in a world in which we are surrounded by strangers, yet also need the pleasures and comforts of home. Buckingham’s anthropological experiences as a sojourner inform this book, bolstered by his familiarity with ancient histories, literatures and mythologies.
