A Conversation with Terry Repak, Author of "Circling Home, What I Learned by Living Elsewhere"

Terry Repak shares the lessons she learned in her expat life in a beautiful way. When Terry and her husband moved to West Africa with two small children at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, she seized the opportunity to connect with people of other cultures and bear witness to the ravages of the horrible disease, the finding of a cure and education about prevention methods. Circling Home: What I Learned from Living Elsewhere (She Writes Press, 2023) chronicles the adventures and challenges of raising children to be global citizens and trying to find home in countries as diverse as Ivory Coast, Tanzania and Switzerland. Her memoir spotlights the complexity, struggles and profound lessons at the heart of the expat journey.

In this episode, Terry describes her rich relationships with local people in Ivory Coast and Tanzania, and how her deep connections abroad changed her. Her favorite quote by essayist, Pico Iyer, captures the tenor of her book and her experience abroad: "Home is not just the place where you happen to be born; It is the place where you become yourself."

Dr. Helene Gayle, President of Spelman College and former Director of the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center says: “Terry Repak writes about her family’s experiences as American expats in very personal ways, without being afraid of sharing some of the unvarnished realities. With candor and humility, she demonstrates how living overseas can be a rich and fulfilling experience. For Americans, she shows the value of opening ourselves to global perspectives and viewing the rest of the world differently while being more analytical of our own actions. Thank you for this warm, insightful contribution to global understanding and particularly to a more textured understanding of the beauty and the complexities of Africa.”

Says New York Times bestselling author, Melissa Fay Greene: "Her honest book captures not only the beautiful people and landscapes and wildlife they encountered at every turn, but the moments of stark loneliness and confusion. She quickly learned to make friends and seek out local women and expats who became mentors and confidantes. This is how she found 'home' wherever she landed.”

Kirkus provided the following review: “[Circling Home is] a fascinating true story that evinces the value of family and the beauty of the world.… The Maryland-reared author left her home country for West Africa’s Ivory Coast in the early 1990s. Adjusting to their new life was a challenge as heightened political tensions in their city of Abidjan made even excursions to the marketplace nerve-racking experiences. Repak and her family proved resilient, persistently adapting as [her husband's AIDS work] moved the clan back to the United States and to such places as Tanzania and Geneva. …The author excels at showcasing the places where she’s lived… and consistently transforms simple observations into lyrical images.”

Terry worked as a reporter for several years before going to graduate school at the London School of Economics and earning a PhD at Emory University. She and her partner lived in East and West Africa and in Europe, where he directed AIDS projects and she wrote and raised their children. She has published two other non-fiction books, numerous travel articles for newspapers and magazines, and her research in academic journals. She lives in Seattle where she continues to write and to teach English to foreign language learners and to garden, hike and swim.

To learn more:

TerryRepak.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/terry-repak-ba47041b/

https://www.instagram.com/repakterry/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063607771451

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