“When you step out of your community and start to learn about other ones, you feel like a stranger. But then by having conversations, and learning about somebody else’s life, and hearing how they feel like a stranger, you have a common experience. So by exploring different cultures and peoples and communities, you really become a common people. What divides us can ultimately unite us.”
We feel like strangers when we are out of our language and culture comfort zone. Our language and culture have formed our identity, and to walk out of that identity makes us wonder who we are in front of others. But then the magic can happen.
In this delightful and insightful conversation with Eavan Mages and Charlotte Peyton, we hear their stories of their origins in two in tight-knit cultures with multilingual social and educational viewpoints, and how that formed their identities as they experienced the world and moved to the United States.
Both Eavan and Charlotte have careers which are founded on their knowledge of various languages, and their reflection on their own cultural heritages and openness to learning about others’. They have thought a lot about how differences help to form our identities, and how they have felt moving out of their comfort zones and into the common space with others. They share with us through their experiences and stories how facing identity discomfort, acknowledging it, and understanding that others feel the same way as they face us, can open to us the possibility of kinship across linguistic and cultural groups.
Enjoy the podcast, and check out their biographies and the resources they each share.
What is your language and cultural identity? Have you stepped out of your identity comfort zone to connect with others? How?
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