foreign

Awkward Traveling. Poised Interculturalists. Native People. Hopping Places

The more time we devote to following our interests online it seems the more relevance we find. The problem: how can we ever share all the fabulousness?! The solution: rounding up zillions of links resonant to our community that cross my screen.

  • At China Expat, Carolyn Vines, the author of Black and (A)broad: traveling beyond the limitations of identity, considers the changes in a woman's identity after an international relocationMoving away from our cultural context, she writes, we learn to see ourselves with different eyes.
  • If you grew up in the Americas you grew up with Native American history of some kind and at the very least, reflected in place names. Facebook hosts a massive collection of antique photos of Native Americans, organized by tribe, including ethnographic and commercial images as well as family portraits.
  • Diane Caldwell, an original contributor to the Expat Harem anthology, once ate Jack Kerouac's peanut butter. On her new blog the free spirit writes a requiem for AsmalimescitIstanbul's hoppingest back alley.

What Expat Bloggers Are Made Of

I was honored to be included in a group of Cross-cultural and International Bloggers to Watch in 2010. As the guest curator in a review series at SheWrites, I'm pleased to note a few fellow expat bloggers. I'm drawn to the subject matter of these writers (and many others who I hope to highlight in the future). Posts seem compelled by the daily negotiation of expat/immigrant/exile identity. Shaped by unfamiliar environments. Inspired by moments when belief systems are challenged or uprooted.

You'll recognize fiction-writer Catherine Yigit as a contributor to the Expat Harem anthology and the group blog expat+HAREM. In Skaian Gates, the Dublin native writes with a wry sensibility about “living between the lines” of culture and language on the Straits of the Dardanelles. She takes us through the gauntlet of getting a Turkish driving license. Although prepared for the exam, she discovers she'll have no control over the vehicle since her examiner has a lead-foot on the dual-control pedals! Even if we learn the rules and practice the gears in our lives abroad, we often sense we're not in the driver's seat and we have to be okay with that.

Professionally-trained artist Rose Deniz lives in an industrial town near the Sea of Marmara, a body of water named for its marble-like surface. Her spare blog reflects deep ideas and personal geographies, like the trouble with being the kind of person who visualizes color, numbers and forms in the midst of a chaotic Turkish family setting; and finding the art in life outside the studio. Her real-time, online 2010 discussion series in which "art is dialogue and the studio is you” will be hosted at expat+HAREM.

Petya Kirilova-Grady, a Bulgarian who lives in Tennessee with her American husband, writes about bi-cultural misunderstandings and shares her embarrassment over a recent gender role snafu. The only way to explain why  the progressive young woman “couldn’t be bothered to do a ‘typically male’ task” in the domestic sphere is because Bulgarians are traditionalists at home. Petya writes of the realization “I can’t remember the last time I felt as Bulgarian.”

Expat bloggers flourish when we face a fresh appreciation for not only where we are but where we come from -- and what we're made of.

Who are your favorite expat bloggers and why?

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