The Displaced Nation

Columnist Elizabeth (Lisa) Liang‘s guest this month is a TCK of Lebanese origin, who has lived almost everywhere apart from Lebanon!

Greetings, readers. Today’s interviewee is Dounia Bertuccelli, writer, editor, mentor, and one of the moderators of #TCKchat, a Twitter chat for TCK kids around the globe. I first met Dounia at the Families in Global Transition 2014 conference, where she was a Parfitt Pascoe Writing Residency scholar and I was performing Alien Citizen: an earth odyssey as the final keynote. Since then, Dounia’s writing and my show have had positive trajectories, so I feel like our paths are parallel.

Dounia was born in Nicosia, Cyprus, to Lebanese parents—but has never lived in Lebanon. Her father worked for a US-based company with branches around the world, and Dounia spent her childhood and pre-teen years in the USA (Wisconsin), Mexico, and the Philippines, and her teens in Australia and France.

As an adult, Dounia has studied/lived in the U.K., France and the United States. She earned her undergraduate degree in History/Geography at Institut Catholique de Paris (actually not a religious institute) and her BA in History at the Sorbonne. After taking a year to work, she enrolled in the University of Surrey in the UK to pursue an MA in European Politics, Business and Law. She worked in France again for a while. Her latest move was to Connecticut six years ago with her husband, who also grew up as a TCK, for his job.

It’s a pleasure to interview Dounia for The Displaced Nation.

* * *

Welcome, Dounia. Your peripatetic, multilingual childhood must have included so many adventures and challenges. Were you happiest in a certain place at a certain time, and if so, why? 
That’s a really great and interesting question! It’s also a tough one but here goes… As a teenager, I found the two years I lived in Australia to be the happiest and most carefree. We moved there from the Philippines (where safety was an issue, especially for foreigners), and our newfound freedom was exhilarating. As a teenager, it was the ideal place: it was safe, and we had sunshine, beach and friends. Initially it was a very difficult transition, but once I settled in, I loved it—and it remains a very positive memory. As an adult, I have been happiest living in Paris. It’s where I’ve felt the most sense of belonging. I still don’t feel 100% like I belong there and I can still feel like an outsider—but less so than everywhere else. Paris is beautiful, vibrant and truly taught me independence. I also met the love of my life there, and it is where my family has settled down, so it will always hold a special place in my heart.

Do you identify most with a particular culture or cultures or with people who have similar interests and perhaps similar cross-cultural backgrounds?  
There is no black-and-white answer here. A lot of it comes down to the individual and their family background. I definitely identify with people who have similar cross-cultural/global-living backgrounds because there is an unspoken understanding and connection. But I also identify with those who come from a similar heritage and familial background. Not necessarily the same origin, but who were brought up with similar values and family ties.

“I long for somewhere,/ without knowing where.”

How do you like living in Connecticut?
It’s been a mixed experience. People have been nice and we live in a cute small town…but there is very little diversity and, although we may look and sound like everyone else, we are very different. That has made it difficult to meet people we connect with and to feel as though we belong. It’s also tough to live in a small American town after living in Paris for 10 years and having access to other European cities. And it’s definitely not easy being across the ocean from my parents and siblings.

Did your TCK upbringing inform your choice to become a writer—and has writing helped you to process your TCK upbringing?
I have always written, but I don’t know if that comes from my TCK upbringing or if it’s just my character. I think writing has helped me process my TCK experiences, as it has helped me process most things in my life. I’ve always written to express myself, to put my thoughts and emotions on paper—through journals, prose and poetry. As I was growing up I wrote about everyday life, and also during every move, in airports between homes and everything else in between. I still do that and I think it’s definitely helped me process my experiences as an adult TCK.

“And yet I long to settle,/ To put down roots.”

As an ATCK, do you now have “itchy feet” or do you prefer to have a home base and only travel for pleasure?
I think it’s a bit of both. I’ve been in the same place for 5.5 years and that’s long. I’m ready for a change and to be somewhere new. But at the same time I’m not sure I want the constant upheaval of frequent moves. I think I would like to settle and have a home base, but only somewhere special to me and where I can also travel easily. Even if I settled down somewhere, I would need to travel frequently to feel the thrill of the unfamiliar, see new places and keep those “itchy feet” content.

Are you working on anything at the moment?
I have my ongoing work as a freelance writer and editor—I am the Expat Resource Manager for Global Living Magazine. In addition, I’m working on a variety of projects: I’m a moderator for #TCKchat (a twitter chat for TCKs around the globe); I write the TCKchat column for Among Worlds; and I work with the Parfitt Pascoe Writing Residency scholars as their mentor and editor (as you mentioned at the outset, it’s a scholarship program for new TCK/expat writers to attend and write about the Families in Global Transition Conference). You can find all my published works on my blog as well as on my LinkedIn page. It’s collection of non-fiction prose, poetry, occasional book reviews and photography.

* * *

Thank you so much, Dounia. Readers, please leave questions or comments for Dounia below. You can also follow her on Twitter, where you’ll be led into the monthly #TCKchats (#TCKchat is held on the 1st Wednesday/Thursday of each month with 2 sessions: 1st session at 15:00 GMT and 2nd session at 3:00 +1 GMT). And be sure to take a look at her creative works on her blog, the aptly named Next Stop.

Editor’s note: The two quotes are from Dounia Bertuccelli’s poem “Longing,” which was first published on her blog in 2014 and also appeared in Among Worlds (December 2015), a magazine for Adult Third Culture Kids (ATCKs).

Elizabeth (Lisa) Liang is a prime example of what she writes about in this column: an Adult Third Culture Kid working in a creative field. A Guatemalan-American of Chinese-Spanish-Irish-French-German-English descent, she is an actor, writer, and producer who created the solo show Alien Citizen: an earth odyssey, which has been touring internationally. And now she is working on another show, which we hope to hear more about soon! To keep up with Lisa’s progress in between her columns, be sure to visit her blog, Suitcasefactory. You can also follow her on Twitter and on Facebook.

STAY TUNED for next week’s fab posts!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to register for The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of weekly posts from The Displaced Nation, and so much more! Register for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Related posts:

• TCK TALENT: Benjamin Jancewicz, missionary kid, socially responsible graphic designer and pioneering vector artist
• TCK TALENT: Mary Bassey, Writer, Storyteller, Advocate and Scientist
• TCK TALENT: Nancy Henderson-James, Missionary Kid in Angola, Librarian in North Carolina, and Author/Memoirist
• TCK TALENT: Sezín Koehler, multimedia artist, tatoo collector, editor and prodigious writer
• TCK TALENT: As 2016 approaches, Lisa Liang dares to dream big for her one-woman show, “Alien Citizen”

Photo credits: Top visual: (top row) Eiffel Tower image via Pixabay; Coat of arms of the former university of Paris, France (Sorbonne), by Katepanomegas via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0); Connecticut 1980 camper trailer plate, by Jerry “Woody” via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0); and Dounia Bertuccelli (supplied); (bottom row) Lebanon via Pixabay; Selimiye Mosque (originally the Cathedral of Sainte Sophie), in Nicosia, Cyprus, by Chris06 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0); and The Surrey Scholar in Guildford, by Mike Peel via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Middle visual: House and heart images via Pixabay; Avenue des Champs-Élysées photo via Pixabay; Hartford, Connecticut by Doug Kerr via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0). Bottom visual: Writing and photography images via Pixabay.