Journeys Beyond Borders: A Conversation with Dr. Tamara J. Walker

Welcome to another enlightening episode of the Black Expat Podcast! Join host Carl as he sits down with the distinguished Dr. Tamara J. Walker, an author, historian, and nonprofit founder, to delve into her incredible journey and insights.

Dr. Walker, a Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College of Columbia University and co-founder of The Wandering Scholar, shares her experiences as an African-American expat and how her travels have shaped her academic and professional life. From her early immersion programs in Mexico and France to studying abroad in Argentina, Dr. Walker's story is one of transformation and discovery.

In this episode, learn about the profound effects of travel on Dr. Walker's life and career, her work in promoting accessible international education through The Wandering Scholar, and the invaluable lessons from her book, "Beyond the Shores." Discover how history and travel intertwine to provide a richer understanding of the African-American experience abroad.

Don't miss this inspiring conversation filled with personal anecdotes, historical insights, a deep appreciation for the power of travel and education, the significance of inclusive travel narratives, and the role of history in shaping our understanding of travel. This episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about travel, history, and the Black expat experience.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
What up, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Black Expat Podcast.
My name is Carl, and I'm excited to be rocking with you guys for yet another episode.
I'm very excited to be joined by a truly distinguished guest for today's episode of my podcast.
I am just very ecstatic to dive into all of the knowledge and talk about all

(00:21):
the experiences that she has to share with us. But before I go off on my own
tangent about how awesome she is, I definitely want to allow Dr.
Tamara J. Walker to introduce herself, a little bit about her background and
why she's joining us here today on the Black Expat Podcast. Welcome,
Dr. Walker. How are you doing today?
I'm good. Thanks for having me. My name is Tamara J. Walker,

(00:41):
and I am an author, an historian, and a nonprofit founder.
And the through line through all of my work is a love for travel,
and that's what brings me here today because I love to talk about all things travel.
And I do apologize. I left some things out.
Professor of Africana Studies at Bernard College of Columbia University and
co-founder of The Wandering Scholar, among many other things as well, is Dr. Walker.

(01:06):
And again, very, very thankful for having you join us today on this show.
But I do want to jump right into it. So you've done a lot of amazing things.
You are a professor, you've written books, you're a co-founder of a nonprofit.
How did your academic journey lead you to focus on the experiences of African-American expats?
So I think it was my experience as an African-American traveling that led to

(01:30):
my academic experience.
And then over the course of my academic experience, I decided to kind of turn
the lens to focus a bit more on my own journey and how it connected to other
African-Americans journeys.
So I'm from Colorado and grew up in the 90s and went to private school where
I had opportunities to participate in immersion programs.

(01:53):
So I was able in my sophomore year to travel to Mexico for about two weeks through
this program that they called Interim.
And then I was able the following year to study in France for two weeks with the same program.
And those experiences, just in the way that travel does in high school,

(02:14):
if people are lucky enough to have those experiences, and I'll come back to that.
Those experiences had a really profound effect on me, the experience of being
Black in Mexico and standing out because of my race, and also the experience
of just falling in love with speaking a foreign language and navigating a new country.
Those were things that really stuck with me and propelled me through high school and college.

(02:36):
I ended up studying abroad in Argentina when I was an undergrad.
And that experience really changed the course of my life because it was in many
ways a really negative experience that I was able to process through scholarship
and research into the history of slavery in Latin America more generally.
And through that, I became an historian myself.

(02:57):
Slavery and colonial Latin America and wrote my first book on slavery and dress and colonial Peru.
And over the course of my academic career and my career as a researcher,
I kept accumulating travel experiences and just wanting to reflect on that.
And so I ended up writing my book Beyond the Shores as a way of kind of bringing
those two things together, because I wouldn't have become an historian of colonial

(03:18):
Latin America had I not had these travel experiences.
And then I wouldn't have written the book in the way I did had I not been an
historian and been really steeped in the history and culture of different cultures
in different countries around the world.
And those were things that just shaped the way I structured the story and thought
about race and thought about the experiences of the people I write about in

(03:40):
the book. So it's all connected as far as I'm concerned.
That's amazing. So are you yourself multilingual? I am.
Yeah. So I majored in Spanish and history as an undergraduate and then studied
French and studied Portuguese, which are languages I can read and understand.
Don't ask me to speak them. I have a lot of shame around my verbal abilities

(04:04):
of both of those languages, but I'm a forever student and always wanting to learn and improve.
I know you kind of alluded to it earlier, right? So like what part of your journey,
because I do want to get into Beyond the Shores because I have so many questions around that.
Well, like in your initial journey, do you think when you were in high school
that travel was really unlocked for you?
Or did it take that experience in university to really unlock it to the extent

(04:27):
where you really wanted to dive into it, into the products that dive into it
and led you to the products that you're working on now and also in the future as well?
Yeah, I guess both things are true. Travel as an opportunity was unlocked for me in.
High school. And in part, it's because I went to a middle school that was also
private and super well-funded and didn't get to have this experience of travel.

(04:50):
My middle school history teacher took a bunch of students to Russia after we
had spent the whole year, again, it was the 90s, Cold War era,
studying Russian history.
And I couldn't afford to go on the trip. And so I carried that sense of like
a missed opportunity and a road not taken into high school where fortunately,
Fortunately, thanks to my mom and also thanks to a scholarship from my school, I was able to travel.

(05:15):
And it was something I really needed, honestly, coming from these private schools
as a Black student, coming as a scholarship student into this world of privilege
and opportunity and still living in my neighborhood, which was lower income.
I just felt like I was constantly kind of pulled between two different places
and not entirely fitting in in either one of them.
And so I always thought of travel as this form of escape and a form of kind

(05:39):
of remaking myself in the way that I think a lot of young people do and kind of fantasize about.
So the opportunity to travel really kind of became clear to me in middle school and high school.
But I think the idea of travel as what I really kind of come to see it as a life's work,
because I do so much in my research and writing and thinking and nonprofit work

(06:02):
that is steeped in travel and exploration and cross-cultural engagement.
I think that became clear to me the older I got. Yeah.
And maybe not even in college, but in grad school and beyond.
And it's so interesting because honestly, I just thought of this for myself
and just thinking about how people that I grew up with and grew up around and

(06:26):
how we view travel and how we kind of viewed it as we got older.
And I realized that when I was in grammar school from first to eighth grade,
I went to a very diverse school.
So while travel wasn't a huge part of my experience, I was surrounded by different
cultures around the world were celebrated, like from all over the world.
And that was a big part of my early lived experience.
So then in college, when I had the opportunity to travel to another place,

(06:49):
another country, it wasn't that big of a shock to me to kind of embrace that
because I had been already a part of for a majority of my early child education.
I had access to that, maybe not from a travel perspective, but definitely just
from an exposure to cultures, which is why I wanted to ask you that because
it was very, it sounds very familiar
to how I was kind of brought up in my educational journey as well.
Well, I just didn't. I went to private schools, but I didn't have the money

(07:12):
or the ability to access to travel because it was just out of our price range at that time.
So that was a very interesting one. I wanted to kind of dive into that as well.
Yeah. And I relate to what you're saying, albeit from a slightly different angle,
because Colorado, when I was growing up there and in Denver,
it was not the most diverse place in the world.
Now it's become a lot more diverse in terms of there being large immigrant populations

(07:34):
from various parts of the world and also people from various parts of the U.S. who relocated there.
But where I did feel like I was constantly moving between worlds was in commuting
from my neighborhood to this private school and having to learn,
you know, the ways of what felt like a new country and new culture.
And so I think that actually kind of equipped me to thrive in many ways when

(07:57):
I traveled, just because I already spent so much of my life having to navigate
new environments and new spaces and just develop a sense of ease,
even if I didn't kind of recognize it as such.
When I look back, I do realize that I did have that ability to kind of move
between registers and travel just felt like a natural extension of that.
Absolutely. And then when you think about Beyond the Shores,

(08:20):
what key insights were you able to uncover about the lives of Black expats through your research?
And what are some of the highlights that you were able to share with us as well?
Yeah, one thing that I realized pretty early on in the process of writing the
book proposal was that this was such a big story.
And often, when it comes to the popular imagination around African Americans

(08:42):
going abroad, there are just some key figures and key places.
It's Josephine Baker, it's Richard Wright, it's James Baldwin,
and it's primarily Paris.
And what I realized early on, even just through my own experience and through
my family's experience,
my grandfather is a World War II vet or was a World War II vet and had been
stationed overseas and had children who served in the army and were stationed overseas.

(09:05):
I knew that there was a much bigger story to tell that involved more than just
these bold-faced names and more than just this iconic city.
And so I wanted to just capture that in the people that I was telling stories about in the book.
And then what was your second question? Sorry.
Oh, just any notable people that you'd like to highlight as a result of your

(09:31):
research as well. Yeah, so there are so many.
The way I structure the book is that I've got these narrative chapters that
focus on an individual or in some cases a pair of people and a single place
or in some cases a pair of places that from the 1920s onward,
I go decade by decade to kind of tell the story of what was at stake for African

(09:54):
Americans when it came to leaving the United States and what it was that was
happening in the United States.
The U.S. that kind of made them have to leave in the 1920s and the 1930s, the 1940s and onward.
There were different things happening in the U.S. that made it necessary for
many African Americans to leave.

(10:15):
Take their themselves and their families overseas.
And I also wanted to look at the different countries around the world that were
either welcoming to African Americans as places of refuge or were extending
themselves to African Americans for different opportunities.
And so with that structure in mind, which I also kind of weave in my own story

(10:37):
and these kind of vignettes in my family's stories.
I spotlight people like Florence Mills, who, like Josephine Baker,
went to Paris in the 1920s in search of opportunities as a stage professional.
And she was often compared to Josephine Baker when she arrived in Paris in ways

(10:59):
that I think showcased a bit of racism on Parisians' parts.
And so in telling her story, it's a way of de-centering Josephine Baker,
but also complicating our understanding of Paris in the 1920s,
because we tend in the U.S.
Popular imagination to write about Paris as this place of welcome and refuge from U.S. racism.

(11:20):
And in many ways it was, but it was also plagued by its own racist history,
history of slavery, of xenophobia, of nativism.
And there were many Black Parisians living in the city at the same time that
Florence Mills and Josephine Baker made their way to the city.
And they came from Paris itself. They came from West Africa.

(11:42):
They came from the Caribbean, places where the French had had overseas colonies.
And they were struggling to be included, struggling to belong.
And I wanted to put all of those people in the same frame and acknowledge knowledge
that there was this large diasporic population in Paris in the 1920s,
not just African-Americans,

(12:03):
and that the things that African-Americans experienced as welcome were not always
that and also were shaped by their privilege as Americans.
So then it's a way of talking about the American aspect of the story and how
that differs from the experiences of people from the Caribbean and from West Africa, for example.

(12:23):
And then there are other stories that I could tell, including about these agronomists
who go to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. They go all the way to Uzbekistan and
spend several years there.
Some end up returning to the U.S. I end up writing about two men,
one of whom returns to the U.S.
The other ends up moving to Moscow and living out the rest of his days.

(12:45):
And so in telling those stories, I'm spotlighting people in familiar places,
but whose stories are not familiar to most readers or spotlighting people in
unfamiliar places to incorporate them into this history of African-Americans going abroad,
which is ultimately a story about African-American history and about U.S.

(13:06):
History more generally. Yeah.
Now, see, wow. So I'm going to take a step back, guys. You guys know me.
I have so many questions just from that one thing.
And what's standing out the most to me is a question I want to ask is,
has the impact that you're looking to make through the work that you're producing, right?
How has it changed from when you first started? Has it or how has it changed
from when you first started up until now?

(13:27):
Because for me personally, when I started this podcast, right,
and also when I started traveling and started bringing people to study in Asia,
one of the things that was really, I had a lot of questions that I was trying to answer on my own.
I didn't really know where to look to find information about people who have
maybe done something similar to what I was doing or completely different,
but were just Black people traveling out in the world.

(13:47):
And the reason behind the podcast was like, hey, I want, people are asking me
these questions and I just want to share what my experience is.
And it kind of grew into, wait, I'm meeting more Black people in more places
where I didn't even know they were living and thriving and building different
types of lives, not just to escape America, but just to live and build their
families because they like the cultures there.
There was just so much that kind of blossomed from me just being curious of

(14:11):
knowing, are there other people out there in the world doing what I'm doing or have done it before?
And when I'm reading your book and I'm going through information,
I'm like, well, I'm just learning so much and it's really just connecting all the pieces for me.
So that goes back to my question, like, did it change from when you first started until now?
And how do you see it evolving in the future as you continue to do this very, very meaningful work?

(14:35):
Yeah. I mean, I think that when I was younger,
my focus was on having as many travel experiences as I possibly could and going
to as many parts of the world as I could and finding as many opportunities to
have someone else pay for it as I could in terms of getting scholarships and
fellowships and things.

(14:56):
In having those experiences, I would look around and in some cases see a lot
of Black people and be surprised because the travel industry would have you
believe that Black people are new to travel, right?
Because it's only in recent years begun to diversify its coverage of who is traveling, right?
And with the rise of social media, we're seeing more Black people telling their stories about travel.

(15:19):
But what I knew growing up and what I started to learn in my own travels was
that Black people have been traveling from the very beginning, right?
Our story begins with a journey, right?
It's a very different sort of journey than the ones we're talking about on this
podcast, but Black people are a traveling people.

(15:40):
So I have been really invested in spotlighting that history.
But the other thing that I discovered in my own travels and in my own incredible
opportunities is that there are certain spaces where Black people were we're missing from.
So for example, when I was in graduate school studying slavery in Latin America,
I had a fellowship to do dissertation research in Peru. I had a Fulbright.

(16:03):
And I went to a gathering of Fulbright fellows that had convened from all over
the Andean region in Lima, where I was based doing my research and looked around
the room and realized I was the only Black person in the room.
And I had the opportunity during this gathering to be seated at a table next
to a representative from the Fulbright organization.
And I remember asking a question about kind of why the room looked the way it did.

(16:30):
And the answer has really stuck with me, both because it was frustrating,
but also because aspects of it were true.
It was frustrating because there was a sense on part of the Fulbright organization,
at least this representative of the organization.
That the quality of the projects that people were presenting was not there,
which of course is wrong and steeped in discrimination, right?

(16:54):
And these are all subjective determinations, what constitutes a quality and
viable research project, right?
But the other thing that she had said was something that really kind of energized me or galvanized me,
which was that there wasn't enough of a pipeline for Black students either coming

(17:15):
out of college or in graduate school, applying to these kinds of fellowship programs.
And I understood that I was primed because of my early travel experiences to
be an ideal candidate for that sort of fellowship because I traveled to Mexico
in high school and France and Argentina.
By the time I'd applied to a Fulbright in graduate school, I had all these experiences under my belt.

(17:37):
I had done research in foreign countries. I spoke Spanish.
I was conversant in these other languages. And so So what I realized was that
I didn't want to be the only one, you know? And so-
And because I'd gone to these well-funded private schools that I finally got
some money out of to travel, I wanted to find ways to create opportunities for
students from backgrounds similar to mine.

(17:58):
So my partner, Shannon Keating, and I came together with similar kind of origin stories.
She's a couple of years younger than me, and she is a white woman from New England,
but who grew up working class and was a scholarship student at private schools.
And it turned out that we were on very similar tracks. We had gone to Mexico
in high school. We had studied abroad in Argentina.

(18:20):
And then we had decided that we wanted more people from our backgrounds to have
these kinds of experiences.
And so that was the genesis for founding The Wandering Scholar,
this idea of creating opportunities for low-income students to have transformative
travel experiences that, in the same way it did for us, it altered the course of our lives.

(18:40):
And we wanted to create space for those students and opportunities for those
students to have similar life-altering experiences. And we sent our first student
on a trip to Costa Rica in the summer of 2010.
And in the almost 15 years since then,
have sent students all over the world and on to careers that have taken them

(19:02):
all over the world and have created this really dynamic generation of wandering
scholars because we continue to call them that even after they leave our program.
That is amazing. And I'm so glad to ask that question because I didn't know
that last part, but I knew some of the beginning part.
But just the journey in and of itself and really making a point and being proactive

(19:26):
about providing these opportunities for other people is just so inspirational.
Because again, it's, I, it's just something I've always wanted to learn more
about how to get proactively involved in.
I'm into, and really just hearing and being able to speak to someone who's really
empowering people to do so. Um, it's just, again, it's just,
it's really just a true honor.
One of the things that I've been learning from, cause I think I've traveled in two ways, right?

(19:46):
So early on in my earlier life, before I had the financial ability to travel
the way that I'm able to now, it was all kind of self-discovery, right?
But also just with technology and things It was very figure it out as you go.
Whereas now I've been able to plan ahead and set things up so that I can get
what I really, truly want out of traveling, but also because I have the experience,

(20:07):
I kind of know how to do that.
And in your opinion, what part, how does history, how should or how much does
or how much should history play a part in how we experience travel?
And then also the second end of that is about Black History Tours abroad and
the unique experiences they offer.
What advice would you give to people who are traveling, looking to learn more

(20:28):
about Black history, maybe not in a Black place, but it's in places throughout
the world? Yeah, yeah, those are great questions.
And as far as the first one, I do think that there's a lot to be said for having
an understanding of the history of the places that we're traveling to,
to prepare ourselves for what's in store.
And I didn't have that when I was going to Argentina. I was a history major,

(20:51):
but I was studying modern Latin American history through a very particular sort of lens.
It was one that didn't account at the time I went to college in the late 90s.
It didn't account for a Black presence in Latin America.
It accounted for a European presence. So I understood that Argentina,
where I had studied abroad my junior year in college, was home to a large population

(21:12):
of European immigrants.
But I hadn't really been prepared for what all of that history would mean in
terms of my lived experience as a Black person stepping into this place that
was nicknamed the Paris of the Americas and that was very proud of its European
heritage and not so proud of its African heritage,
so much so that it was denying the African heritage and presuming that Black

(21:35):
people in Argentina were from Brazil.
And in my case, that meant that the assumption was that I was a sex worker.
So they had these stereotypical notions of what brought Black people to Argentina.
And for a lot of women, the assumption is that we were there for sex work.
For men, it was slightly different because U.S. popular culture kind of traveled
in a way where they would assume that Black men were athletes or actors.

(22:00):
And I got some of that as well.
No one could conceive of me as a student, right? The last thing anyone thought
I was, was an undergraduate studying abroad.
But in some ways, you know, I think about this a lot.
If I had had, you know, TikTok or Instagram back when I was planning to study
abroad in Argentina and got insight into what was in store, if I'd gotten that

(22:24):
ahead of time, I would never have gone.
I would have been like, no, thank you, actually.
Like I'm going to pass on that. But my life would be totally different if I
had passed on that experience, like everything that has come to me and that
I have done and put out in the world was a result of that experience.
It made me want to study the history of slavery and race in Latin America.

(22:48):
That's just been the focus of my professional life for 20 years now.
And it's also made me believe very strongly that we should go everywhere, right?
That there aren't just certain places in the world that are best for us,
but that it's important for us to be in these places that aren't accustomed
to encountering regular old students, right.

(23:11):
To change the perception of African-Americans or even of Americans, right.
Like there's just in so many parts of the world, you know,
even today, this very narrow conception of what an American looks like and how an American behaves.
And what I've always thought in my own travel and what I always appreciate about
the affordability and accessibility of modern travel is that it expands people's

(23:35):
understanding and image of Americans.
And that it also challenges some of the kind of prevailing stereotypes about
Black people because our pop culture travels in ways that doesn't always,
you know, represent us and our full humanity.
And I'm not saying we have to take on the burden of changing people's opinions

(23:55):
of us because there are going to be people determined to misunderstand us and
that's not our job to change them,
but to just kind of recognize that we carry a lot of power as travelers and
I think there's something that's really, really beautiful about that.
And so that's kind of one of my firm beliefs that, you know,

(24:15):
even the places that tend to be kind of depicted on social media as,
I mean, it's one thing to talk about danger,
but as places get depicted as uncomfortable or unwelcoming,
I tend to kind of want to push through some of that within reason,
right? And everyone has to make their own choices.
But I think about my own experience of discomfort, I spent the semester being

(24:39):
really uncomfortable, but in ways that really changed me and charted a trajectory
for me that I would never want to do.
Give back. I don't know. I can definitely understand that for sure.
I think I remember when I was in Beijing, China, studying abroad for six months.
And I say now, I say, because of all my early experiences, I am now comfortably
uncomfortable when traveling.

(25:00):
I'm still used to being uncomfortable. That is kind of like,
okay, this is, I don't want to say it's the norm, but it's something that I
can definitely adapt to.
And I can kind of understand how I'm feeling that moment and kind of,
okay, make everything click and see how do I want to respond and how How do
I want to be in this moment?
Yeah. And as you were speaking. And that's travel, right? Sorry,
I think that's really it, right?

(25:22):
That so much of what is beautiful and powerful and transformative about travel
is that discomfort and learning how you manage and navigate through it.
And like in your work and maybe even for yourself, what advice would you give
to someone who does struggle with the ability to kind of, because,
well, and I'll just say it, an experience I had in Taiwan was someone was struggling

(25:44):
with the fact that they felt like they had to,
respond and represent Black American culture and answer all these questions.
They really couldn't deal with the weight of that. And it was something that
really wore them down and eventually led them to not want to travel.
They just wanted to be at home where they were more comfortable.
It's like, what advice do you have? Or have you yourself maybe had an experience
where it just kind of became too much to bear, like being Black in a space where

(26:07):
people really didn't understand you understand the culture and had so many questions
and maybe it did get a little bit overwhelming at one point.
Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I, I received that, especially as someone who,
despite all my travels has never traveled to Asia.
And so, and I have to say that that seems to be a common experience of, of traveling to Asia.

(26:27):
So it's, it's hard to, it's hard to put myself in the position of giving advice
because I feel like there,
there are fewer and fewer places where that happens beyond Asia,
although maybe it's changing somewhat with the rise of K-dramas and Black people
being such huge fans of K-dramas and planning travel to those places.

(26:48):
So maybe slowly but surely, some of those dynamics are shifting in different parts of Asia.
But I guess the other part of my answer is that when I think about those things,
I think about the past and I think about the people who came before us.
And one line that I have in my book that I always think of comes from Langston
Hughes. So he had this travel memoir, I Wander As I Wander.

(27:09):
And at the end, and he's been telling the story over the course of the book
about going to Cuba, going to Haiti, going to Uzbekistan, where he met up with
the agronomist that I end up writing about.
He goes all over the world and there's always a Black person.
And he says at the end of the book, you know, I've since been around the world
and I've seen at least one Negro everywhere.

(27:29):
And I think that is such an important thing to keep in mind that like black
people have been all over, right? They went as far away as Uzbekistan.
I write about someone who went to Tokyo and these were people traveling during
times where they truly were black.
Among the small, small handful, right? And in isolation without access to,

(27:53):
you know, their people in the ways that we have access to our people,
because we have the internet and we've got social media and email and FaceTime,
and we can bring our people with us and connect with them and get the support
that we need from them even at a distance.
And so I get a lot of inspiration from the people that I end up writing about

(28:13):
in Beyond the Shores because they were just so brave in taking these,
these leaps into the unknown, right?
Because they were often among the first to go to these places and didn't have
people to, to kind of report what was in store for them.
And so they, they took on so much. And so there's a part of me that's always
like, wow, if they, if they can do that, you know, and,

(28:36):
and give up so much in exchange, because so many of them were leaving for good
or leaving without a clear sense of when they would come back home and they
were leaving their parents behind and their siblings behind.
I think there's something that's really profound about that and really inspiring.
And I mean, it's awe-inspiring too. And it's just something that I try in my

(28:57):
own way to take strength from that and a sense of purpose from that,
that they did something that, you know...
Still seems impossible. And yet they, they managed to do it and live to tell
it. Yeah. That, that part, absolutely.
It's being able to live and tell the stories for us to really learn from.
And I know that's something that, well, not that in particular,
but I know as I'm, as I always reflect on my own travels and as I begin to re-travel

(29:20):
now post COVID, it's really like, okay, well, did I, I'm always comparing.
I'm like, when I first started traveling many years ago for 10 years and how
I wasn't so reliant on technology and how everything just felt like a fresh experience.
I didn't look things up outside of flights and hotels, right?
It was when I get there, I'll figure it out.
Hostels, all that. And it was such an eye-opening experience.

(29:41):
I kind of went into things blind in a sense, but now there's just so much,
I look and see how I travel with other people.
And I say, I really don't like the preparation because the preparation prepares
me and sets expectations that may not be met or may make me feel a certain way
if it's not an experience I want to have it.
So I really just like going into places, not necessarily blind,
line, but without expectation and really figuring out ways to connect with the

(30:02):
local culture, because that is what I'm going there for.
And that's the kind of experience that I think energizes me and makes me feel
like I've made a connection to where I'm going rather than just showing up and
having a few experiences here and there.
I do want to touch on the Wondering Scholar a little bit more,
right? Because I know you went into a little bit earlier, but what does the
process look like from start to finish?
And then how have you worked to sustain it for as long as you've been able to so far?

(30:29):
Yeah, so it's very much a labor of love.
And we've evolved our mission somewhat.
So we started out being purely focused on making international travel accessible
to high school students from low-income backgrounds and try to empower them
to become engaged, globally-minded citizens.

(30:49):
We've added a new aspect of our mission that kind of evolved really naturally
from the first, which is to produce multimedia content that embodies our vision
of engaged, globally competent citizenship. And that's because we're.
We're more than just a scholarship, right? We don't just write checks and then
send the students on their way.
They apply to our program. They have to write essays about why they want to travel.

(31:14):
And often we have them identify which programs from a selection that we curate
they most would like to participate in and why.
And then we ask them to just do some introspection based on our mission.
Why do you want to be a wandering scholar? What does that mean to you?
And so we get a good sense of how they think about their place in the world.

(31:36):
We have an interview process after students submit their applications.
And then our program runs for six to eight weeks.
And it consists of a pre-departure component, the in-country experience, and a re-entry program.
And so we have two weeks of pre-departure training, really, which is designed

(31:57):
to get the students familiar with their host country.
And we have them reading local newspapers.
If they read the local language, then all the better. But it happens that because
of how often Americans travel and this sort of wide reaching expatriate community
in various parts of the world, there are a lot of English language newspapers.
And because so much of the world is fluent in English, there are so many English language newspapers.

(32:22):
And so it means that there are a lot of sources is that people can consult to
familiarize themselves with their host countries and know what's happening socially,
economically, politically, to know what they're walking into.
And for us, that's important because it sets the tone for how they're going
to relate to their host country.
One thing that we are aware of and trying to kind of work around is the predominance

(32:48):
of volunteerism within the youth travel sphere.
And there's a whole kind of reward system for that.
Students write about volunteering in orphanages or building playgrounds for
their college essays, and colleges like to hear that sort of thing.
They like to hear that students have priorities outside of schoolwork and a
sense of community service.

(33:09):
But it's unfortunate because Because volunteerism creates a lot of problems,
exacerbates a lot of existing problems, and takes opportunities away from local
people who have skills and capacities that are not being nurtured.
And so we're aware of that as, you know, most teen travel programs are volunteerism programs.
There's really no getting around it until more structural change is happening.

(33:32):
But our feeling is that we can create a program that allows students to think
of their host countries as sites of knowledge,
not just places that need help and that produce really kind of generic narratives
because students, when they come back from certain parts of the world, not all of them,
come back with this narrative that people there are poor but happy.
And so we just want to have people interact and engage in more meaningful,

(33:57):
in-depth ways so that they can come out with more meaningful, in-depth stories.
And so the idea, the kind of core thing that we're doing in our pre-departure
program is helping students develop ideas and plans for documentation projects.
Those can be photo essays.
They can be video projects.
They can be more kind of conventional research projects.

(34:20):
We conceived of it as kind of a baby Fulbright program to get students comfortable
with doing independent research and asking people questions,
interviewing them, kind of poking around,
doing something in addition to the community service that they're often there
for and learning about their host country.
And sometimes they'll interview their host families about the recipes that they're.

(34:44):
That they've been making and like the food ways that those things
are are part of and then they'll do culinary segments
and sometimes we had a student who was really interested in spoken word poetry
and traveled to Peru and just was inspired by the experience to create poems
based on that experience and so we have a really kind of wide sense of of what

(35:07):
kinds of projects students students produce.
And then we also have a podcast.
It's on hiatus for the time being, but the podcast was also a place for students
to share their experiences and their documentation project could be a podcast episode.
So they take their trip ranging from two to four weeks and they're researching,
they're getting all kinds of experiences under their belt.

(35:29):
And then they come back home and they kind of close the loop on their documentation
projects that they They then use as a kind of recruiting tool for the experience
of travel, whether they travel with us or with other programs,
they go back to their home communities that are often filled with students just like them,
low-income students, first-generation students.
And through this sort of peer-to-peer kind of recruitment model,

(35:50):
they share the possibility of travel and the wonder of travel.
And we've gotten quite a few applicants from the same schools precisely because
of the peer-to-peer model.
And so that's, you know, to answer your other question about kind of how we
sustain this sort of work, that is the thing that keeps us going,
just recognizing that we are planting these seeds in people's lives and they'll

(36:14):
stay in touch with us even after they graduate high school and college.
Some have gone on to graduate school because it's been that long and just found
ways to think of themselves.
Like we think of them as wandering scholars, but they also think of themselves
as forever wandering scholars.
And that, you know, keeps us going. It's a really.

(36:34):
Really gratifying. It's hard work, but it's really gratifying work.
And it, again, feels like my life's work in a lot of ways.
And it sounds amazing, right? And it, well, not sounds, it sounds and it is
amazing because I'm a part of the, I'm a Posse scholar and it was very,
and the setup was kind of similar when it was like, you know,
you have a group of 10 people and then you, we have six weeks of training before we go to college.

(36:54):
And the whole idea is that a lot of first-generation kids were going to college
without the parents and people would kind of explain what the process is and
they were dropping out because they were like, oh, I don't have any support there.
And the Posse, I always consider myself a Posse scholar and how it really opened
my eyes to, hey, I can succeed in college and I'm not on my own.
And I have somebody there that's going to help me get through it.
But also it just helped me look at things very, very differently,

(37:16):
really opened my eyes to the opportunity that the world has.
And it really helped that my Posse was very diverse.
It was 11 people from all over the world that spoke many different languages,
like from Africa, South Korea, from Nicaragua.
It was which is such an amazing initial experience that again,
when I reflect back, I'm like, this is why I'm so comfortable being in different

(37:37):
places around different people, because a lot of my early lived experience was like that.
And that's the importance of getting things of having programs like the Wondering
Scholars that you can actually get early exposure to it.
And you just, you just really never know what that could lead to for an individual,
for a group of people, for a friendship group.
It really does kind of just spread out and just ignites and it's going to lead
to just amazing experiences.

(37:58):
I'm sure you guys have seen throughout your entire program and throughout your
life's work, which honestly, I really want to get involved in on a volunteer basis, however I can,
because again, travel is a passion of mine and sharing and helping people live
out experiences they never thought they could is such a huge passion of mine.
But I've just really kind of been figuring out ways to get more involved.

(38:20):
And this just sounds like the best thing ever, honestly. Yeah.
Well, and I'm glad you say that in part because one thing that I have noticed
is that we really struggle to recruit young men.
And, you know, one way that we have volunteers get involved,
and I'll talk to you offline about this, is as travel mentors. tours.

(38:42):
And the idea is that we pair students with people from similar backgrounds.
Maybe they come from the same hometown or cultural background,
or they've spent time in the place that we're sending our students so that they
can be this sort of support resource for students,
even when it comes down to like, how should I pack or should I get my host family a gift?

(39:02):
And also our volunteers tend to be people like yourself who have found ways
to continue to engage the world in different so that they can see, so our students can see.
These aren't just kind of one-off experiences, right, that they can set you
on the path for a lifetime of global engagement and just feeling at ease in
the world and thinking about travel in creative ways and, you know,

(39:24):
creating jobs that didn't exist 10, 15 years ago, right? Right.
So, but just back to the point about the gender imbalance, it's,
it's been really interesting to, to notice.
And, you know, we have our, our, our ways of kind of recruiting applicants,
but it just remains, it remains a challenge to, to get young men applying to

(39:48):
the program and thinking about travel as, as something that,
you know, makes sense for a summer.
And it's, it's a tall order. I recognize this for a lot of students,
not just young boys that, you know, not working for the summer is, is a real thing.
Right. And it, it means that you are giving up one thing for something that costs money.

(40:09):
Right. So that's obviously where
the scholarship that we provide and the funding that we provide comes,
comes in handy, but there, there are other things and people have other obligations
and other ways that they identify that they want to nurture in the summer,
whether that's sports or...
Other, you know, what have you,

(40:30):
summer programs focused on science and engineering and things like that.
So we're always trying to think of ways to expand our reach and make sure that
we can continue to produce more people such as yourself, more people such as
myself, and the people that we got to become through travel.
I don't know for sure. And that's my real lived experience, like living in Taiwan

(40:53):
for 10 years, and I was director and hiring teachers.
Over 200 teachers is I hired male, 20 males compared to 180 non-male teachers.
And it was just, and even like my friendship group, like I recently took my
best friend since we've known each other since we were 15, 14,
13 years old, just now went to Asia or traveled with me somewhere.
It was Asia this time. And now we're going again this year.

(41:15):
It just took one experience, but the fact that it took 15 years to really convince
him and I was like, and I had to reflect, I'm like, okay, how do I change this for my nephew.
Again, offline, we can talk about that. But yes, it's definitely been my relived
experience. It's been hard to get.
I've had so many female friends come and visit me, but male,
it's just like, oh, why would I go out there? I'm like, well,
do something different. Yeah. Plainly. Yeah.

(41:38):
And yet at the same time, just kind of going back to one of the questions you
asked before in terms of like, how do you tell people that it's worth it when
they go places and people are staring at them and making them feel uncomfortable?
You know, life is so hard in the U.S.? Do you really want to pay money to have
another hard experience? Like, I think that's also a real thing.
And to feel, you know, on display, hyper-visible, like all things that people

(42:01):
and Black people and Black men are in the U.S., right?
Like, that's often a fear there, right? Like, am I really, is that a vacation?
Or is that more of the same, but in another language and, you know,
a different currency and time away from work, you know?
That's true. So many other follow-ups I have to that, but I do want to keep going forward.

(42:24):
But man, so many such great gems so far.
So many great gems said so far on this podcast. Guys, thank you guys for tuning in.
Could you share just one or two of your most memorable international travel
experience and how it influenced your perspective on Black expat life?
Oh, that's a good one. So one that I write about in Beyond the Shores is when.
And I'm going to try not to get too emotional about it.

(42:46):
I went to Salzburg with my mom, my sister, my aunt Juanita, my uncle,
and my aunt Juanita's kids because she moved there with my grandparents when
she was just two years old.
My grandfather was stationed there after World War II, and they spent five years
in Salzburg, Austria, and this was—,

(43:06):
experience was kind of the stuff of family lore growing up.
There were just all these kind of tidbits they would share about their time
there that I romanticized as a kid and continued to kind of romanticize.
So we had this experience of, you know, it was a family pilgrimage,
right? Where my grandparents had passed away.
My oldest uncles who were also there at the time had passed away.

(43:29):
So my aunt Juanita was the only one still with us who had lived through this
experience. And we were putting a lot of pressure on her to remember things
from when she was like two years old, three years old.
So it was an impossible amount of pressure.
And we were just hoping that things would come back to her. But we still had
this incredible experience of going back to the apartment building that my grandparents lived in.

(43:50):
And because, you know, they had long passed away, it was just a way for us to
feel close to them in ways that I never expected to like travel all the way
to Austria and feel close to my grandparents.
So that was just incredible. And the older I get, I think the more the family
travel experiences mean a lot to me.
So on Thursday of this week, actually going to Argentina with my husband and

(44:12):
then later my mom, my aunt, my sister, the same crew is going to come join me.
And like, that's where, you know, my story began in so many ways.
So it'll be fun to take them to this place that like really made me,
but also to make new memories with them and feel close to them.
And in many ways, my grandparents, because I would call them all the time from Argentina.
So it's kind of a neat way to connect with family in ways that you don't always get to at home.

(44:36):
And isn't it just the best thing ever? Like one of the best things I was ever
able to do was to fly my mom to Taiwan and just spend a week with me.
I'd been there for like six or seven years. And, you know, again,
it's just she didn't have a passport.
It was all these things that I was really taking for granted.
It. And then we were just able to have like such a deep conversation about like,
cause you know, one thing that people, whenever I bring this up, people think I'm crazy.

(44:57):
I'm like, I always ask like, well, why did you guys travel so much?
But then, and it was when I was younger, but then you just forget of what the
world was like when they were coming up and all the things that they were not
able to do. So having her physically be there.
And like, I can just imagine that experience for you and Asher is just one that
just really, that's going to live with you forever.
And then, you know, we fast forward and it's like, okay, I've done all this

(45:17):
traveling and who do I want to share this with, the people that mean the most
to me, who can understand me the best, and I can actually show them things that
I've learned and see how they respond to it.
It's the best thing ever. And I think it's something that it's one of the best
gifts that I think I share with my family is when we have experiences outside of our hometown,
our home state, and then definitely outside of the country, because they then,

(45:40):
in a selfish way, they get to see why I'm the way that I am.
They're like, oh, this is why you love it so much. That's the selfish part. No, totally.
But that's meaningful, right? Because they get to see you in a whole different way, right?
So it's just, there's just nothing like that. So thank you for sharing that.
I know, again, for me, every time I think back to it, it's like,
my mom there and it was, she was like, this is why you stay here? Oh my God.

(46:02):
So yeah, thank you for sharing. So in what ways do experiences of African-Americans
at home, so where we're from in the States, compare to abroad,
just based on your research, and also just the personal things that you've witnessed
as well? Oh, that's a good one.
You know, I was just at this exhibition in Seattle. It's called Nordic Utopia?

(46:24):
African Americans in the 20th Century. And it's at the National Nordic Museum
in Seattle, then it'll go to the Chateson Museum in Madison,
Wisconsin, and then it'll go to Scandinavia House in New York.
And it's a multimedia exhibition so it's got art that was produced by many of
the african americans who moved to the nordic countries beginning roughly in

(46:44):
the 1930s and 40s but it also has.
Testimonials like it's got essays and interview segments and one of the interview
segments really there are two things that stood out to me from that exhibition
one was an interview segment where a black man his name was bernie moore and
he did a documentary that aired on danish broadcasting on the Danish Broadcasting Network.

(47:06):
And he was like, I can't find an apartment here either.
So I have the same problems here that I had in the U.S. So that really kind
of poked a hole in this kind of fantasy of these places as refuges, right?
That there are going to be particular challenges because we live in a world
that is steeped in and shaped by racism, right?
So there's no getting around that in some ways.

(47:28):
But then the one that really stood out to me was was this line from a textile
artist who lived in Finland,
who had incredible work experiences and opportunities collaborating with Finnish
textile companies and ceramic companies, and really was responsible.
Like when you think about Marimekko, Valilla was another company that he worked

(47:52):
for. His name is escaping me. I think it's Howard Brown.
He really shaped kind of Nordic mid-century Like when you think about those
countries and the aesthetic of those countries, he was really instrumental in shaping that.
But he ends up moving back to the US and he basically did it because he missed Black people.
He missed the kind of boost that he got from being around Americans.

(48:17):
People he came from. And I just, I thought that was really interesting, right?
Because you could tell that his creativity was really the result of how he was raised, you know?
And I think sometimes there's a tendency when it comes to talking about travel
to talk about leaving the U.S. Like there's now, you know, a revival of the
black sit discourse because we're in an election year and people are like,

(48:38):
let's just get out of here.
Or there's a way sometimes when people talk about travel, of kind of depicting
people who don't travel as, you know, as yokels, as unsophisticated.
And what I thought was so beautiful about what he was saying was that,
you know, I've been around the world and I still, I still know,
I still know what, what's what, you know?

(48:59):
And I think that was just a really grounding and affirming and really inspiring
way to think, you know, and there's no, there's no right way,
no wrong way, but that one was one that just really resonated with me.
I don't know for sure. and I said, I lived 12 years in Taiwan,
but it's nothing like, it's nothing like home with people.
And it's so funny. I told you what I say. I lived in Taiwan,
but at one point in my life, I had a completely all black staff and not black Americans.

(49:22):
They were black from all over the world. And I intentionally hired, I didn't know.
I definitely intentionally hired that way for a short period of time.
So I was like, you know what? I just want to be able to walk into office and
say some words and have some feelings and people just get me.
And I think like 10 years is a long time.
And it was like, I definitely needed that for like that middle portion to just,
I just wanted to feel a little bit more comfortable.
So that definitely was something that helped me remain there with just having

(49:43):
that network to fall back on that.
People that really got me and understood who I was at my core,
despite where I was in the world.
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And I think that's the kind of flip side or the same
point, but just made differently too, that you can make that in lots of places,
but you have to be intentional about creating it.
It doesn't come easy or even all that naturally.

(50:05):
Really super intentional. And I do, I do have a few more questions,
but I don't, I have a lot more questions, honestly, but I'm going to boil them down to a few.
Cause I know we're pushing up against time here, but one of the things I always
ask, this is not always, but I definitely want to ask you specifically because
you're, I mean, you're involved in a lot of amazing things.
You're a professor, like you do so many things full time. How do you balance it all?

(50:27):
How do you maintain balance? And how do you put, where are your pro,
where do you focus mostly priorities now, and then still being able to advocate
for accessible international ed? Like, how do you do it all?
Yeah, I think it's a good question. And I answer it differently at different
kind of times of year and different times in my life.
The beauty of being an academic is having summers to reset and reframe.

(50:51):
And so you caught me at a good time where I'm feeling energized,
especially because we had a really fraught academic year.
And so it allows me to do the thing that I love most, which is to travel and to write.
Like I really, especially because of kind of what I was able to unleash in writing

(51:14):
Beyond the Shores in terms of memories and reflections and connections,
have really enjoyed that experience.
And I write for a living as an academic and I write scholarly books about slavery,
which is a really heavy, fraught topic.
And so I've come to see writing about travel as... I mean, there's still heaviness

(51:34):
and there's still fraught stuff, but I see it as...
A really transportive experience, especially writing about people from the past,
because it's a different form of travel, like traveling back in time.
And I'm an historian, so I'm always going to love that.
And so I find that relaxing. I was just actually, I lived in Toronto for five
years before moving back to New York City.

(51:55):
And my husband and I were just up there for the weekend.
And yesterday, I did what Toronto people do best, which is to just enjoy.
There's a lot of places that have like, and I'm not going to get it right because
I was thinking they're bathhouses, but they're not there.
They're places that just have jacuzzis and steam rooms and saunas.

(52:18):
And I just did a water circuit yesterday and zoned out. And it was one of the
most relaxing things I've done.
So I like that, especially to just feel grounded in myself because there's something
that's very embodying about that where you're like, okay, I'm sweating,
I'm cold, you know i'm hot you got to
move around so you you have to connect and i

(52:39):
spend so much time being really cerebral that it's really good doing that sort
of thing and like walking and exercising to just feel connected to my body and
and you know treat it treat it well and with kindness and and care so i think
that's where i'm at right now but in you know january it's usually just white
knuckling it and there's no balance.

(53:02):
Yeah. So that was, oh my goodness. I was teaching, yeah, teaching for,
I never thought I would be a teacher once in my life, but teaching for 11 years. I adored my summers.
It was the best thing ever, especially teaching so intently and developing all
the programs and really trying to, you know, teachers who teach know it's hard
and it's draining and it's a lot, especially when you're doing heavy work that

(53:24):
you do, but also just really,
really important and influential work that's really meaningful and really going
to push people to step outside their comfort zone to just shed light on things
that we haven't known about.
And I think that's just amazing overall.
Okay, funny thing. So the first person that got me out of the country in a different way.

(53:46):
So I think when I was living in Taiwan, my very first international trip on
my own that wasn't through a school or anything like that was from one of my
good friends at the time.
His name was Brad. He was a history major. He was a historian.
And I always ask him, I was like, what are you like? What? Why history?
Because I was very like, I'm a history. I love history, but his there's levels
to it. Right. It's like I knew history, but he knew history.

(54:07):
So for students interested in pursuing careers in history or like even in academia,
like what advice do you have for them based on your own experiences?
And like, how did you know that history was the path for you?
It took a while for me to know that I wanted to be an historian because I didn't
go to college wanting to major in history.
I wanted to major in Spanish, and I just wanted to equip myself with the ability to travel.

(54:32):
But then through traveling, I started to have these questions that historical
research helped me answer.
And it, I think, is really the value of history,
that it allows us to understand the present and to have a lot of appreciation
for the people whose sacrifices made so many of our opportunities possible.

(54:54):
I think that's just a refrain in my life, both as far as my family is concerned,
but also as far as our ancestors are concerned,
and even people who did not, you know, birth us, but whose sacrifices and contributions
really, really shape us. Yes.
And I also, you know, even in Beyond the Shores, write about people whose names

(55:20):
we largely didn't know, right? Ordinary people.
And that's something that to me is really special about historical research,
that you can find and share and contextualize the experiences of people who
never thought that their lives mattered beyond their, you know, immediate family.
And even then, sometimes they didn't think that their lives had value,

(55:42):
especially when talking about enslaved people who were constantly given this
message that their lives did not have meaning beyond their labor function.
And so writing the history of enslaved people is especially important,
just recognizing that there were people who went through...
Horrific day-to-day experiences, but who tried in various ways to assert their

(56:09):
humanity and claim dignity and even find spaces for joy.
And so I just see so much of my work as making room for acknowledging that and
celebrating that and kind of living with reverence for that.
And are there any future or upcoming projects or initiatives that you're particularly
excited about out that you want to share with us?

(56:30):
I think I'll always write and think about travel in one way or the other.
I have been kind of noodling on a couple of different ideas,
but nothing that I've narrowed down.
But what I've been spending a lot of time writing about are some of the people
I didn't get to write about in Beyond the Shores.
So for example, I was in Rome in March and was able to write about a woman named

(56:53):
Ada Bricktop Smith, who was a nightclub owner.
And people tend If they know her, they know about her Paris nightclubs from
the 1920s and 1930s, which were legendary and were frequented by all kinds of
bold-faced names, black and white, from the 1920s and 30s.
But she also spent time in Rome in the 50s and 60s and had an equally iconic

(57:15):
nightclub that was part of the Dolce Vita era.
And we know less about that. And so I ended up writing a piece about that.
And again, it's just that same
spirit of kind of paying homage to people whose stories we don't know.
Might forget if not for this kind of storytelling.
So I think I'll continue to do that sort of writing, like just thinking about

(57:39):
travel and history and how the two converge.
And then on the other side of things,
the reason I'm going to Argentina in part has to do with some research I'm doing
on race and visual culture in Latin American history and the depiction of people
of African descent in various forms of Latin American art from colonial era
portraiture to modern and photography.

(58:00):
And I am putting several regions in conversation with one another,
places that have always meant a lot to me and that mean a lot within the history
of Afro-Latin Americans and that converge in ways that I want to explore in
this book that I've been writing for quite some time and hope to make headway on.
Okay. Well, when that's out, please let me know. Well, actually,
no, I'm going to look it up. So you don't have to let me know.

(58:21):
I'm going to find it on my own.
That is such exciting work. Oh my, guys, you guys know I'm a huge fan of amazingly
talented, wonderfully brilliant people.
And I just am very, very honored. Thank you so much, Dr. Walker for joining.
I have so many more questions, but we only have so much time,
but thank you. Your work is just so powerful.
And I just really, really appreciate you sharing just everything that you've

(58:43):
worked on, you're working on and all the things you're going to do in the future.
I do have one fun question that I always say for the end. I know you already
have a podcast, so it's kind of like, don't use that one.
But if you were to host your own show in a silo. It's just you.
And I'll frame it this way. Something that you could just, if you had a microphone
or a pen and a piece of paper, and then you had to write what you said,
because I know you're a writer, what could you talk about endlessly?

(59:06):
And what would the name of that podcast be that you feel like you could just do?
Oh, that's really good. Let's see.
It's already a crowded field. I really like reality shows.
And i listen actually i already listened to a lot of podcasts about reality

(59:27):
shows but they're often like recap shows and then i have a friend who i'll like
recap the recap shows with,
maybe something like that like recapping the recappers which means i spent a
lot of time thinking and talking about reality television outside of travel
and everything else you know what i think it's me too and i it's something i

(59:48):
don't really talk I love watching recaps of certain reality shows.
I also just watched House of the Dragon yesterday. But other than that's not
reality. That's just semi-good television.
Well, my favorite reality recappers also recap House of the Dragon.
They're called Watch What Crappens.
Sorry, I'm writing this down. And they call it Winter is Crappening.

(01:00:09):
Because they also recapped Game of Thrones. I will be tuning in.
Thank you. And they're very funny.
Well, then, thank you so much. but are there any questions that you have for
me or anything else you'd like to explore? I know I had some questions around ecotourism.
I don't know if you want to touch on that, but any questions that you have for
me or anything else that you kind of wanted to dive into?
Actually, you had said something that I thought was really profound

(01:00:32):
about kind of traveling with your own agenda rather than being influenced because
we do live in this period of travel influencing that is connected to sustainable
tourism or is in many ways at odds with sustainable tourism.
I was recently in Venice for the biennial and Venice is a place that is really

(01:00:56):
kind kind of suffering under the weight of tourism.
And I recognized that even by being there myself, I was complicit in it.
And I was trying to figure out how to, you know, make a little bit of peace with that.
And the city of Venice has this kind of rule book for responsible tourism.
It's called Enjoy Respect Venezia.
And they have all these suggestions of things to do and things not to do.

(01:01:21):
And I was struck by one of the things they were telling us not to do as visitors
concerned with sustainability and making sure that Venice is preserved for future
generations of travelers.
And that was to avoid stopping on bridges. And it's a city filled with canals and bridges.
That's the main way of getting around Venice. And there's so many bridges and they're so beautiful.

(01:01:42):
And I noticed that there was one particular bridge, the Rialto Bridge,
where people were lining up to get photos. and.
I'm like, well, how does this work if they're telling you not to stand on bridges,
but you have all these people lining up to take pictures?
And I realized that what they were doing, I was just kind of poking around online.

(01:02:02):
And so many stock photos of Venice have people standing on that bridge.
So many Instagram influencers have photos of themselves standing on that bridge.
And that shapes people's understanding of what there is to do in Venice and
what you have to do to really have gotten a Venice experience.
And I think that that's kind of where we are.
We're at a point where we have to kind of reimagine what it means to have kind of done a city.

(01:02:30):
Like, does it mean checking off the same list of things that everyone has done,
especially if it means that those things might not be there for future generations to participate in?
And so if we are thinking, and so much of our conversation has been about thinking
beyond ourselves to, you know, not just the people that we know and love now,
but people that we will never meet, like future generations of people, what do we owe them?

(01:02:53):
And I think that's at the heart of so much sustainable travel discourse.
And it might mean not getting that picture, right? And not doing the things
that other people hold up as the kind of thing you must do when you go to a
place and be our own influencers. answers and maybe it also means kind of not
going to some of these places.
And I think about these things a fair amount.

(01:03:15):
And one of the pivots that we've made at The Wandering Scholar or areas that
we've expanded into is a newsletter and we call it postcards from The Wandering Scholar.
And I can share the link with you to share with your listeners,
but it's a place where we are producing content that allows people to think
critically about travel and to shine a light on ourselves and our own behavior

(01:03:36):
and think about what we can all do as individuals and communities to make sure
that this thing that we love so much is accessible to future generations.
And that's similar why I definitely wanted to ask about, and I'm thinking through
the connection and how much more we should work to connect history to travel.

(01:04:00):
Because again, some of the best experiences I have, I didn't see any monuments.
I didn't go to any place I saw on, well, back then, I guess when Instagram just came out.
The best experience is the most memorable. It's always been when I met with
local people and just had conversations about the place itself.
So, because those are the things that kind of stick with you.
Like, yes, a picture can last for a very long time.
But those memories and those stories I'm going to pass down to my family, my friends, my kids.

(01:04:23):
Things about, oh, I went here and this is what the conversation was.
This is what I learned about the people and the place.
Those are the things that you really want to walk away with and is going to
really stick with you rather than a photo that everyone else has taken.
Like, I think as people, we do like to feel special. And like,
what's more special than making a connection with somebody that you would have
never done so with had you just remained where you are or never went to this
place, this new place, this new area?

(01:04:44):
So that's what I'm working to do within my space and how I travel and how I
curate travel for people who are looking to go and travel throughout Asia is
putting more emphasis on that and less emphasis on things and more emphasis
on experience and the people and the history that comes with that.
That because I just came back from Cambodia and Vietnam.
And my wife and I, we remember every story that we were very lucky to get a

(01:05:06):
private guide, but the stories weren't just about the things we were saying.
We asked about their daily lives and the culture and how it impacted them and their generations.
Those are the things where I was like, wow, I would have never known this,
but now I feel more connected to Cambodia because it's what's underneath Angkor Wat.
And that's the history, the millions of years, the thousands of years that have
gone by and And that culture that they can encapsulate way better than I could

(01:05:28):
via just reading. So yeah, I love that.
That was, thank you for answering that. That really, again, just, I love travel.
So I'm always inspired by things people say, but I know that the audience really
appreciates this as well, because it's been an amazing conversation.
So is there anything else you'd like to share before we conclude here today?
Any questions that you may have?
No, this was a great conversation. Thanks so much for all your thoughtful questions.

(01:05:51):
I could talk all day, but I know things have to come to a...
An end at some point. And thank you so much, Dr. Walker, once again,
for joining me here today on the Black Expat Podcast.
Ladies and gentlemen, she is a professor of Africana Studies at Benar College
of Columbia University, co-founder of The Wondering Scholar,
and author of Beyond the Shores.
Please rest assured, all these things will be linked in the description of this

(01:06:13):
podcast. So please make sure you check it out.
Learn more, follow more, share more, all those wonderful things.
Again, a big warm thank you to Dr. Walker for joining me here today.
Thank you guys for tuning in. My name is Carl, the Black Expat. We're out of here.