Charles and Alejandra's Story

“It’s like I have one foot here and one foot there. So you have a little bit of both.”

Charles’ aunt, Alejandra, was born in Chile but has been in America for almost 30 years – more than half her life. When you’ve been away from a place for so long, it can be hard to maintain a connection to that place. Alejandra talks about how it feels to fight for that connection, why it matters to her, and the role played by language.

You can find the transcript for this episode here.

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Over the past year, during the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve been working with a group of people from all over the world, teaching them to podcast and helping them to tell personal stories about the experience of moving from one place to another. Everyone who took part was brand new to podcasting, and most of the episodes were made without any professional equipment, using mobile phones and free editing software. The results of this course are seven episodes: each one about a very different migration experience, and each person bringing their own style and personality. We hope you love them as much as we do.

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Charles Lee is an academic and literary translator based in Asheville, North Carolina.

Alejandra Cole is a Chilean-American Spanish language teacher in Florida.

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