People of all kinds – yes, people of color too – go abroad to live, love and learn. They study a language, they follow a partner, they go just for the heck of it or for a midlife crisis. Sometimes, they flee war or poverty, but not usually.
Tired of not seeing her story represented, Amanda Bates created The Black Expat – a media centering the stories of Black global citizens. In this episode, she discusses her TCK childhood between Cameroon and the US, the challenges of life in-between and who gets to be called an expat vs. an immigrant.
00:00 Intro
01:55 A TCK childhood
06:14 An American teenager in Cameroon
09:08 A Cameroonian student in the US
12:56 Why TCKs and first-gen college students relate
16:43 Minority students and the study abroad experience
18:34 How to become a Borderline member
19:40 Centering the Black expat experience
22:27 Blackness is not monolithic
29:07 Expat vs. immigrant and the power of words
38:17 Outro
The Black Expat is at theblackexpat.com, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. Its podcast, The Global Chatter, is on all the usual podcasting platforms.
📬 Read, listen, subscribe & support on Substack | 🍎 Listen on Apple Podcasts |
🎧 Listen on Spotify | 📺 Watch on YouTube | 🌍 borderlinepod.com