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Episode 614: When You Move Abroad and the Locals Don't Like You (with Beth Ann Fennely)
Description
What happens when you move abroad with the intention of contributing to the lives of the local people... and those local people don't seem to like you. Author Beth Ann Fennelly joins us to talk about her experiences teaching English in a dark, polluted Czech town just after the fall of the communism, where the locals viewed her with distrust or downright suspicion and she struggled to make even one friend.
This interview highlights the grim fact that not all expat experiences can live up to expectations.
What happens when your expat dreams look nothing like the reality?
Beth Ann Fennelly is the author of the new book The Irish Goodbye, a collection of micro-memoirs. She was also Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2016 to 2021 and her work has won a Pushcart Prize and was included in The Best American Poetry series three times.
She appeared on the show before for another collection of micro-memoirs titled Heating and Cooling. You can also find Beth Ann Fennelly on a previous episode called MICRO (with Beth Ann Fennelly). We also used one of her micro essays as a launching point for a discussion on Episode GLAMOUR.
Find Beth Ann at her website or on Instagram.
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