0:00- Dahwula’s introduction
0:32- “Where are you from?”
2:28- Early adolescence in America, culture-based discrimination
3:21- Experience in ESOL classes
6:46- Lack of exposure to language and culture outside of home life
7:37- Bullying cultivating a seed of resentment towards Dahwula’s African background
10:48- The rift between the African Americans and Africans
13:51- Complex feelings about culture as an adolescent
15:12- “I didn’t care about the culture until other people started caring about the culture”
15:51- Absorbing American culture
17:58- The risk of culture as a trend
19:53- The cultural experience of food
20:14- Dahwula’s favorite Liberian food
21:40- Learning through observation as a child
26:49- “The internet taught me to question more”
34:28- Dahwula’s response to being put in boxes as an adolescent
40:54- Mutual understanding in communities of other immigrant children
42:25- “Where are you currently in your identity journey?” + Dahwula’s reflections on self- autonomy
44:53- The sacrifice that comes with finding a middle ground of self-autonomy
45:46- “What do you define as your culture?”
47:22- Permanent connection to Liberian culture
49:39- Utilizing art to advance culture and break boxes of expectations
52:06- The evolution and maturity of African culture
53:25- The evolution of Dahwula’s interest in fashion
55:25- Dahwula’s influences and inspirations
58:32- The outdated “American Dream”
59:00- Dahwula’s American Dream
1:00:37- Liberia as a vacation spot for Dahwula, not a permanent residence
1:04:12- 48% of the way self-actualized
1:06:55- “What do you see for the future of your culture?”
1:07:31- “The thing about culture is you don’t necessarily need to relate to understand something”
1:08:16- The importance of building cultural bridges
Found in Translation is a Pan-African documentary interview series exploring the cultural intersectionality of African descendants across the global diaspora. Guests reflect on the layers of their identity and the role of culture in the modern world.
To keep up with future episodes and additional resources please subscribe to our substack newsletter: foundintranslation.substack.com
Follow us on Instagram @foundintranslationpodcast
If you'd like to provide feedback or if you're interested in sharing your story on the show please email us at foundintranslationpodcast@protonmail.com
Found in Translation is a Pan-African documentary interview series exploring the cultural intersectionality of African descendants across the global diaspora. Guests reflect on the layers of their identity and the role of culture in the modern world.
To keep up with future episodes and additional resources please subscribe to our substack newsletter: foundintranslation.substack.com
Follow us on Instagram @foundintranslationpodcast
If you'd like to provide feedback or if you're interested in sharing your story on the show please email us at foundintranslationpodcast@protonmail.com
This episode features Found in Translation’s Creative Director, Ola.
Ola is cultural thinker specializing in questioning domestic and international power structures as it relates to the African Diaspora and other marginalized communities. Her purpose revolves around finding political systems, linking them to structural histories of inequality and human rights struggles to open dialogue for progressive solutions.
Intro/Outro Music: Happy Ending by Kelela
The Found in Translation Podcast is a Pan-African sociopolitical education interview series reflecting on modern Afrodiasporic history and the legacy of the black radical tradition in an updated context. Follow us on Instagram at @foundintranslationdmv
If you'd like to provide feedback or if you're interested being the show, please email us at foundintranslationpodcast@protonmail.com
In this episode, Uche Ezejiofor speaks with Sierra Leonean recording artist Kenzo Cole about their experience as a queer, gender non-conforming first generation Sierra Leonean in America.
Dazed magazine’s 2017 article covering the House of Kings and Queens, a secret, self-constructed LGBT sanctuary in Sierra Leone: https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/36873/1/lee-price-photos-of-sierra-leones-lgbt-community-where-gay-is-a-sin
Curated by MIT Press Direct, the following are a selection of political cartoons drawn by African artists expressing the push factors of emigration from Africa: https://direct.mit.edu/afar/article/53/3/30/93187/Migration-Emigration-and-Immigration-African
Intro/Outro Music: Decisions by Kenzo Cole
Found in Translation is a DMV-based Pan-African cultural platform and documentary podcast interview series exploring the cultural multidimensionality of African descendants across the global diaspora. Guests reflect on the layers of their identity and the role of culture in the modern world.
Follow us on Instagram at @foundintranslationdmv
If you'd like to provide feedback or if you're interested in sharing your story on the show please email us at foundintranslationpodcast@protonmail.com
On this episode, we discuss George Jackson and the origins of Black August, our individual and collective revolutionary potential, and the power of Black August in supporting a Pan-Africanist framework for black liberation.
Texts mentioned:
Soledad Brother by George Jackson
Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition by Cedric Robinson
Found in Translation is a DMV-based Pan-African cultural platform and documentary podcast interview series exploring the cultural multidimensionality of African descendants across the global diaspora. Guests reflect on the layers of their identity and the role of culture in the modern world.
Follow us on Instagram at @foundintranslationdmv
If you'd like to provide feedback or if you're interested in sharing your story on the show please email us at foundintranslationpodcast@protonmail.com
2:52 Introduction
3:30 Ethiopia’s regional distinctions
4:06 The current regional conflict in Ethiopia
6:33 The media’s role in misrepresentation of Ethiopia
8:53 Tribal differences in cultural traditions
11:11 The Visa lottery
14:25 Story: Arriving in New York
17:22: The importance of honesty in communicating the American experience to those abroad
19:35 Exchanging American currency
22:07 The role of immigrant advocates
22:55 "The people who arrived here first should take responsibility for [the safety and comfort of] newcomers"
24:00 Fear of deportation
25:01 "you don't just come here and relax"
26:40 "America is uniquely challenging", mental colonization, cultural erasure by assimilation to whiteness
30:08 "is America glamorized?"
31:12 The impossibility of hiding your identity as an immigrant
34:04 The experience of immigration to America from an uncolonized African country
37:18 The Ethiopian Orthodox Calendar
38:49 America as a closed society
41:20 The importance of finding community
42:02 "When I travel somewhere the first things I look for are where the Orthodox church and Ethiopian restaurants are"
42:28 Food as a connection to culture
43:24 "The more I make what they make, the more it feels like they're living again, so it means everything to me"
44:19 "What inspires the importance of you holding your culture close to you?"
45:39 "I'm not gonna cut your hand and keep it with me"
46:25 Ethiopian culture post-civil war
48:35 "How your re-learning of Ethiopian history shaped your worldview and understanding of who you are?"
51:48 "The African immigrant experience is so consistently centered around education"
58:40 The stress and emotional invisibility of education and immigration
59:27 "No one knows who I am here"
59:53 African misrepresentation in American media
1:02:01 The importance of "informing our own"
1:06:09 Mitigating the emotional toll of immigration
1:07:29 Imagining alternatives to traditional community resource networks
1:11:46 Perspectives on America's future
1:13:03 Returning to Ethiopia
1:14:38 "No matter what condition I go back to, I feel like I'll be happier there"
1:17:24 Perspectives on Africa's future
Found in Translation is a Pan-African documentary interview series exploring the cultural intersectionality of African descendants across the global diaspora. Guests reflect on the layers of their identity and the role of culture in the modern world.
To keep up with future episodes and additional resources please subscribe to our substack newsletter: foundintranslation.substack.com
Follow us on Instagram @@foundintranslationpodcast
If you'd like to provide feedback or if you're interested in sharing your story on the show please email us at foundintranslationpodcast@protonmail.com