In season 2 of Like Us, Anna Yeon, Noè Harsel and Zione Walker-Nthenda are each inviting friends to the table for a chat about the important things in life. Then they share the interviews with each-other and regroup to unpack.
In this episode, Noè chats with Ashkenazi Filipina Cameron Bernstein.
Originally from Chicago, Cameron is now studying medicine at the University of Brisbane.
She took up learning Yiddish in her final year of university in Chicago, when she couldn't get into a statistics course, and has now built a large social following by charting her journey with the language.
People are like, 'So are you Asian? And then if you're Asian, how are you Jewish?' Oh my goodness. I put it in my bio online because it's a frequently asked question and kind of not relevant to what I'm doing right now. But to them it is relevant because I'm just another face who has come up on their algorithm. You read someone's face and you can observe some things about them and I am an Asian person. And I am a Jewish person. My last name is Bernstein. And so they put all of these clues together and there's a dissonance for them. There's no dissonance for me.Cameron Bernstein
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Transcript
We would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we are broadcasting from, the Boonwurrung people of the Kulin Nation, we pay our respects to their Elders past and present. We would also like to acknowledge all Traditional Owners from all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands you are listening from.
[music]
Like Us is Anna Yeon, Zione Walker-Nthenda and me Noè Harsel: a Japanese Jewish woman, a Korean woman and a Nigerian-Malawian woman chatting about our relationship with Australia and Australia’s relationship with us.
Noè Hey everyone! How are you going?
Anna Hello.
Zione Very well and so super excited to meet our next guest and to hear a little bit more about her. Fascinating.
Noè I'm actually really excited to introduce Cameron Bernstein to you guys, to be honest. She was [during the interview] a powerhouse, super interesting, super exciting. She is a Filipina Ashkenazi artist. She does Yiddishite from the Chicagoland. You'll hear all about her. She says all this in the podcast.
Anna She sounds so smart!
Noè Can I just tell you, she is super smart. She's not hiding any of her smarts for us and I'm really grateful for this. She began learning Yiddish in her final year at the University of Chicago. She only graduated in 2020. Blew me away. She's been channelling her education into making these really engaging and super accessible content about Yiddish language, culture and history. She does it on TikTok and Instagram, which is actually how I found her. Don't laugh at me.
Anna Wow. I'm impressed!
Noè That I'm on TikTok? Or that I've…
Anna All of the things!
All [laugh]
Noè She's so fun. She's so fun. She's worked professionally in public health, in communications. She's worked at the Yiddish Book Center in Massachusetts. She's a medical student at the University of Brisbane, I'm sorry, studying at the University of Brisbane and Australian MD programs. I mean, I really cannot wait for you to hear this interview. She's super interesting.
Anna Woohoo!
Zione Fantastic.
Noè So let's get into...
[music]
Noè Thanks, Cameron Bernstein, for being here. I'm really, it's really great to have you here. And it's really, it's exciting. It's different to have a Yiddish speaker with me. I mean, I feel out of my depth, but I need to ask you the question that I've been asking everyone I've been interviewing for Like Us because it's something we all share. And I want to know, what do you say to people when they say: where are you from?
Cameron Yeah. Well, at least in my program, I'm studying at the University of Queensland right now. The first thing I have to say is I'm an American because there's some Canadians in our program because I really identify with the Chicagoland Jewish communities.
And sometimes I have to orient people when I'm here in Australia. And then we go down the next level, and I'm like, I'm a Filipino Ashkenazi Jew. It's, I don't know, it's really important for me to put all three of those bits in. Yeah, I'm a Filipino Ashkenazi Jew from the Chicagoland Jewish community. People might hear or might not hear that I'm an - oof!- that I'm an American, and it's, yeah, pretty rooted in all of those communities.
Noè I love that. Can you just, because it's something I think that's super important that, I mean… my family also has the Chicago Jewish roots. So I totally, yeah, we are Skokie people.
Cameron Oh my goodness!
Noè Yes.
Cameron My dad is, yeah.
Noè Okay, so we're probably related somewhere. We can talk, we can work that out. But I would love you to, you know, explain what that means, why the Chicago part is super important. And then also, you know, what that means when you're saying I'm a Chicago…, I'm Ashkenazi, I'm a Filipino. What does that mean for you?
Cameron Yeah. Well, the Chicago bits really important to me because, you know, all of us came from somewhere to Chicago in my family. We're not, you know, Indigenous peoples of the Americas. And so when I say I’m Chicago, that’s a bit of a throw to the grand stories that shaped my family. So my mum’s parents came from the Philippines in the 1960s to become doctors in the United States. They moved around a bit and they settled in this really rich Filipino medical community in the westside of Chicago. And then my mum is the product of the 1980s there and, you know.
Then we toss it over to my dad and his family came over at the turn of the century. Ashkenazi Jews as in Eastern European Jews from all over that had come to Chicago and their family was in the city; and then, the larger story of - I’ll call it White Flight - just changing urbanisation of Chicago, moved to the outer rank of Skokie where we have that connection.
And then, mum and dad meet at a Chicago medical school and then they move out to the outer suburbs and, you know, I’m born and I’m raised in a specific community of other Jews like me. And like other people whose parents are the product of the 1980s America - and John Hughes movies - and I…it’s a lot but like, you know, but I feel like I can’t…
I don’t necessarily communicate all of that. That is not all communicated when I say I’m a Chicagonian Jew who is Filippino and Ashkenazi, but I feel like…
Noè …it’s in there. And I guess what I’m also trying to work out then, for me it’s implied when I thinking about the Chicago, the Skokie, the Boobie…there is the Yiddish, right? You know it’s interesting and we’ll talk about it, I know and I know it’s inevitable we’re going to talk about the mixed race thing, okay? Because I cannot, not.
But let's just going into the Yiddish because like many, like many Jewish families and diasporic Jewish families, Yiddish is thrown around a lot. There's a word here. I'm actually - let's face it- a lot of… everyone is… a lot of Yiddish is thrown around everywhere now in popular culture. But that doesn't mean that we all then do a deep dive and decide to learn the language. So I'm really interested in what about Yiddish spoke to you so much that you go: okay, I will hear your chachkas and I will then take it on and seriously deep dive and learn this language. Why?
Cameron Yeah. So… I really fell into it. And this is a story that you hear with a lot of Yiddishists. Enthusiasts, I suppose, of Yiddish, they fell into the language a bit later in life. Most of us are not, unless we are members of the Hasidic community, or unique other types of families, most of us did not grow up speaking Yiddish.
Yiddish kind of fell out of use in my family a couple of generations back, really at the turn of the century when my dad's family came here. And my grandmother, my nanny, she remembers a couple of words here and there. We all have the loan words that exist in American English and we use more of them than the average Joe - the average Joe Schmoe - but I didn't consider really speaking Yiddish until my final year of university when I forgot to register for my statistics courses. And there were no statistics courses open, so I was like, well, I enjoyed learning other languages. Like, why not? You [are in] Chicago, the University of Chicago happens to have a Yiddish course. This is a unique opportunity, I like language and like it seems like it'd be a fun thing to do.
And I think Yiddish language classes are a particularly special sort of community because we're all really driven and motivated. Once you start learning Yiddish, Yiddish classes are a specific special place. The teachers are really motivated. They incorporate a lot of cultural context into the language that you're learning. And so one, not that other languages don't do that, but like there's a… there's a specific enthusiasm there.
Noè Do you think people are super enthusiastic about Yiddish because it's almost such an ancient language or it's such a specific cultural context or it's I mean and dare I say it's a language that not that many people are at one point - it's changing I know - have been speaking?
Cameron When I started learning Yiddish it was my final year of university. Kind of what happens when you're in your final year is all of these other things start to shut down. You do your last sports game; you do your last model UN conference; you start saying goodbye to all of your friends. You start applying for your jobs and everything is kind of winding down. And as things were winding down in my Yiddish course, outside of my Yiddish course this language was serving as a key to open up an entire world that would kind of only be accessible via the language.
And so it gives you a key - it gave me a key - into like this whole vibrant world of Eastern European Jewry and literally every place around the whole world where they went when they started migrating places. So it gave me this like window into Buenos Aires; into Mexico City; into the Jewish community of Melbourne. And so as I'm both learning about these people who are using this language as a way to connect with the people from the past - and the present - but for the people from the past who are using that language who would frankly otherwise be forgotten to history.
I think we have a lot…we when we hear Yiddish we think it's a very old language and that's totally true. But we kind of just, like, leave it there like: all right yeah it's like this cute old nostalgic thing. Like, no I'm not gonna think too much further about that and, like, I'm gonna of it fondly but I'm just gonna think about it in terms of the the things I have right now - what I think I know about Yiddish. And what happens when you start entering that community as you're like: oh my gosh, there's so much more nuance to this world than I could have ever imagined and if i'm not learning about it with the people around me today like…
There's all of these authors and their communities and their friendships that like simply don't exist unless you're using your language skills so to learn about them. It's a way to, like, connect with people.
Noè So what I'm what interested in is that, it sounds like you started at almost like a way of understanding history or personal connection and personal culture. But through that, you were able to see a link to the future; a link to a broader community and a link outside beyond, you know, beyond the the walls of history so to speak.
I'm curious about like, how that… was it about the preservation of the language or the expansion of the language or combination of both that you've found super attractive in learning Yiddish so deeply?
Cameron One of the things people say about Yiddish is that it's constantly dying. We really are - we're really preoccupied with that. But at the same time we've been saying that it's dying for like decades, if not hundreds of years.
So I'm not actually really interested in thinking of what I'm doing as reviving or revitalising, like, I'm just more interested in using it and, like, Yiddish is a global language. It's a world language; it's a world history - it's not something that… I'm just gonna pretend - I'm just gonna put on my lenses - and say that it is something that is relevant and it's something that I'm going to bridge into the contemporary world with other other people. So, like, I just use it.
[music]
Noè And I think that's what you do super well. And that's what I love. And I think that's what so many people are loving about what you're doing. It’s that you've got a way of, you know, being Yiddish and doing Yiddish that is more than your language, your learning of the language. And I think that's evidenced by the way you bring it on TikTok and through your social media presence about the living language and the use of it in the everyday. So I'd love to hear more about how that evolved for you and why you think it has such resonance with people? I mean, because it must have, I can only but imagine as having resonance with people who aren't Jewish and aren't speaking Yiddish, you know, all the things, right?
Cameron Yeah. So it started for me I graduated into the pandemic. I had nothing to do other than work 40 hours a week for my first full -time job. And I couldn't go out and I couldn't see my friends. But I was saying my senior year of college, my senior year of university, sorry, you guys use college differently here.
My final year, Yiddish gave me an opening into a world and it was as the world shut down there was still a whole wide world for me to explore and me to do my gap year travels on, “into the archives” - into a whole new music scene, into watching 1980s Israeli Yiddish disco music . I'm like, oh my god, this stuff exists. And so, you know, it was a way to keep…so I started making Tik Toks in order to number one, not lose my Yiddish skills. By using Yiddish, however good or not so good it was at the time when I started using it, I was like: well, it's if you don't use it, you will lose it. And like, I'm just curious and continuing to explore this world.
And so if I forced myself to publish something out on the internet 30 seconds to a minute long, I'll be pushing myself to go a little bit deeper. And most people don't get the opportunity to learn Yiddish in the home or at a university. And so maybe this is a way that I can bring some of what I love so much to other people and give them the key to start opening a whole new world for themselves.
So I just like, let's just do it. Let's just start making these things. I'm not a professor. I'm working in public health. Like, I've got time and like I can sing a little bit, and like apparently videos are fun for me to make. So let's just do this. Let's just have this be a practice.
Noè And people are loving it! Like, you have such a following in people. I mean, I love it. People are loving it. People are loving it, even if they have no intention of learning. So in itself, the mere act of doing this is, an act of peace, an act of cultural awareness, an act of teaching. And I mean, it's beautiful. You must be getting some incredible responses from people.
15:19 I mean, there's definitely the wonderful response from other people of the Jewish community. And I think I love from how diverse of a collection of the Jewish community will find resonance in what I do.
So both the people who just have the cultural connection to their Jewishness, but religion is not really a part of their life. But they are Ashkenazi Jews and Yiddish is a part of their personal family's history [and] to Jews, who are - they don't love saying a religious hierarchy exists, but people - who consider themselves more religious than I do. And so - but all of us - even some members of the Hasidic community who have found my work, even though we know that we come from very different corners of the Jewish world, we share this connection to Yiddish. Via Yiddish being that thing, I'm able to introduce a lot of other parts of my Jewish identity, my multiracial, my multicultural identity. I'm kind of able to pull those into their understanding of what's possible in the Jewish world because I have this Yiddish thing in common with them. So that's really cool.
But then outside of the Yiddish Jewish world, I love connecting with people about they have their own minority languages that they grew up speaking or not grew up speaking or want to find connection to or want to preserve like some man in northern Spain who like you just messaged me from the Basque region the other day. He was like: thank you for what you do, like my language community. We have very similar concerns. So I love seeing you just go out and using it. So I love, I love muments like that too.
Noè That's amazing. And I love what you're bringing up in terms of expressing diversity within communities. And if you don't mind, I'd love to hear your thoughts and what do you say about, I mean, we started by talking about what do you say when people say where do you come from? But I mean, so, for you speaking Yiddish in this community and being mixed race, how does that, how does that play out for you?
Cameron Sometimes when I make my Yiddish content, I'm like, you know, like this is what I'm here to do. And when people they'll throw out a lot of what feel to me as non and like, okay, like here's a woman who wrote about her love life in Yiddish at the turn of the century, and that's what I made my video about. And then they're like, and then people are like, so are you Asian?
And then if you're Asian, how are you Jewish? I'm like, oh my goodness. I put it in my, in my bio online because it's a it's a frequently asked question and kind of not relevant to what I'm doing right now. But to them it is relevant because I'm just another face who has come up on their algorithm that they're scrolling through. And so if I'm using my more … my less judgemental reading of their comment, which is very hard to do, given the number of those that I get, you know. It's not relevant to me when I made that video, but it's relevant to them because you read someone's face and you can observe some things about them and I am an Asian person. And I am a Jewish person. My last name is Bernstein.
And so they put all of these clues together and there's a cultural… there's a dissonance for them. There's no dissonance for me. But it's, it can be kind of annoying or shocking or whatnot sometimes. So that's hard online.
I'm so happy to talk about being a multi racial person when I'm in Yiddish spaces in person, face to face; because, we're willing to have a conversation about it. And like, I can both offer parts of myself and the person next to me can offer parts of themselves. And we have a conversation about what our - both of our - identities [which are] equally complex mean to each other, but it's a lot harder being a person who makes this content online. And I'll just say [it’s] more annoying to receive those [messages online].
Noè Well also because the person who's making the comment to you and I can be super blunt about it, it's much more cowardly. So it's so easy to, you know, press send and disappear as opposed to face and face you're offering an engagement. There's a curiosity, one assumes a real curiosity there.
I mean, I think my, I'm also interested in, I know that you have a natural interest in language and obviously a real skill in languages, it’s perfectly clear. And I wondered through the study of Yiddish, was there something in that that also solidified or helped with your own or, you know, I don't know. Were there something in there for your own identity or your own Jewish identity that was grounding?
Cameron As Yiddish is a language that, that is diasporic, that comes from a people that is diasporic, that had people mostly in central and Eastern Europe who then went to all of these different corners of the world - but were still in contact with each other by learning that language and observing how these people were creating a sense of identity, creating a sense of story - that kind of gave me the capacity to apply the same lens and lessons of what it means to be a diasporic person and carry that identity with me.
I think it made it a lot easier for me to understand my own Asian American identity as well. I think it's really hard to have an Asian American identity specifically when you're bi-racial because so much of it is… number one how we practice it but two, I mean, it's shaped by how others perceive us. So when other Asian Americans don't necessarily perceive you as Asian or other members of the Jewish community see you as, like, slightly Jewish but like in an offspring sort of way that puts you in a weird spot. But via my understanding of Yiddish and Yiddish history and how to explore that and its relationship with diaspora and community, it really helps me understand my mum's side of the family.
[Understanding] our own journey and, you know, what happened when my grandparents came to the United States and how they formed their own Illinois Filipino medical society organisation in the Chicago suburbs. And the barbecues that my mum used to have with the other members of the Filipino American community there, and the balls that they would put on, and the mutual aid that they would send back to the Philippines.
That's so parallel to these organisations that existed in the Jewish world and like I feel my story and understand my identity as a Filipino American through that; the practice of identity not only with what I do right now with my mum and like the holidays and the family etc and that's great and wonderful but also like an understanding this more history and how to situate my family story and all of that.
Noè I love that at. I mean, gosh, I really feel that at the end. I mean it's those hybrid identities - only for others - but yeah, because I mean we are skating between the landscapes of others; that others I would have identified for us have already defined.
I think in small communities like Jewish communities, which can be very narrow minded and more - I don't know how you've experienced in Brisbane - I can't imagine.
Cameron It’s interesting here.
Noè I don't even want to be specific.
Cameron I appreciate the virtual community. Yeah, I also just want to quickly shout out regardless of this going into the episode or not, you know, it's really helpful to me that there are some other members of the Yiddishist community who also have biracial identities. And they're older than me. It's nice to just see them out there, doing their own thing.
And I also want to throw out that, like, while some people clock me online not everyone does, and there are members of my Yiddishist community or Jewish community who, like, have it so much more, intrusively, worse [than me]. The entitlement that people feel to, like, understanding: exactly how are they Jewish? And so, I don't know. I feel very lucky and happy to be here.
Noè Thank you so much for your time.
Cameron Thank you.
Noè Bye.
Cameron Bye bye.
[music]
Noè Hey everyone, so I hope you really enjoyed hearing from Cameron.
Zione Wow, I know it’s layered, nuanced, everything!
Anna I’m letting that digest a little!
Zione Totally. Can I also just say, that was also a fascinating insight into you, Noè . Because of the connection that you both had in terms of having an Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, but also the Chicago Jewish community, you know. And the term Skokie, which I'd never heard of before.
Noè It's a suburb, it's a suburb.
Zione Okay. So there was so much education for me in this particular piece, and I, completely - I love her manner, I love her introduction. It felt very inviting, like she was pulling people into her world to understand her world, and I was so in it. I can so understand how she's super popular on TikTok and Instagram, because that's her manner. It's very, very inviting. I loved it, really loved it.
Noè She's really amazing, very generous, very kind. And it's interesting, so, I mean, everyone that, you know, I've been speaking to is biracial. I mean, and it's interesting that she happens to be Jewish and biracial, so obviously I felt a strong sisterhood to her, and with that, you know, there was a strong connection.
It was a coincidence that she was also from Skokie, just outside of Chicago, as my family also is. And that whole notion of the location and identity and how that holds resonance and history in terms of who you are and how you categorise or, you know, commodify, I suppose, who…
Zione …you are when you say who you are, where you're from, right?
Noè That's right and how that holds. I mean, I guess for me, I thought what was really interesting was how Yiddish for her, I was sort of expecting, yes, that's unlocked a part of my Jewish identity and blah, blah, blah. But what it really did for her was also unlocked part of her Filipino identity.
Zione Absolutely, I loved that. I really, really loved that connection point, because I didn't expect that, right? I felt like, okay, there's the Filipino identity, and maybe she's clear about that, and she's exploring this, but in opening up this world into this diaspora, it opened up a context for her around, ah, okay, this is sort of what that experience is as a second, third generation person in another part of the world trying to establish yourself.
I mean, it was interesting that, you know, her mother came from this Filipino medical community and established themselves in Chicago, and therefore met her father at medical school too, right? As two immigrants, I suppose.
Noè It's just great, right? That they had all of these various connections and almost this coincidence that they made here. And it was this third element, the unlocking through a random study that their daughter finds through that.
Zione In her final year at university…
Noè …because she missed the subject. You know?
Zione Like, just another elective.
Noè Exactly. And then that's the way that she finds her own narrative, her way of understanding her sense of identity.
Anna I just wanted to pick up on what Zione said about how through this interview, we actually got to know more about you, Noè .
Noè I've been trying to make that not happen.
Zione and Anna [laugh]
Anna I know, I know, but I can't kind of move on from that because I think in our friendship, like, I've kind of - maybe, subconsciously - thought of you more as a…person that had, yes, Jewish, the Japanese [heritage, that] part of you. Because it's the part that I can kind of maybe more intimately relate [to] and, you know, share experiences about our mothers, being Asian mothers, da da da. But listening to this interview made me learn.
There's this big educational sort of experience about this sophisticated civilisation that you're also part of that I'm just starting to learn. And you have a literacy, you have a belonging, in this whole other world that- like, somehow - not that you went before, but somehow you seem a little more sophisticated to me now.
Zione If only you knew you could have turned it up sooner.
Anna There's a whole richness of another thing. And there's like, it's everything that you two [in the interview] talked about sounded so smart, but I only understood a fraction of it. You know, I’m like, I don't know a thing about you, you know?
Noè It's so funny, Anna, you say that because there's an entire world who would see me so the opposite. I mean, it's not, not, not smart. What I mean is, like, see me as a Jewish person, not as an Asian person and would be super surprised to hear about that.
Zione So I'm curious about why you think that is. Is it, dependent on how they've accessed you?
Noè Possibly.
Zione So people have known you through your Jewish side, that's what becomes more live for them.
Noè Possibly. Or again, it's about the facing - so it's the presentation, you know, it's the context. It's also about how I possibly look. I mean and we talk about this a little bit as well with Cameron, about how you face the presentation, you know. It’s the packaging, I suppose if you’d like.
The packaging, the wrapping paper that you are presented in. Sometimes it is complicated for the people who are viewing it. And so Cameron, who is, I suppose, arguably, and excuse me for the way this, comes across in saying, but is beautifully, you know, is beautifully mixed race. And so when she sings or speaks in Yiddish, the packaging is not as one expects. She doesn't look like your stereotypically “Ashkenazi Jew”. So that could be quite confrontational for some people who are viewing or listening to her. And she has had to deal with that on a social platform. So it's very different, contextually very different.
Zione Absolutely. I really liked how she talked about it, she just owned it, right? Like, she recognised that while it doesn't present that way for her and her lived reality, for other people, there's some kind of dissonance for them. And so she makes it a point to - sometimes - just articulate that for them, just make it easier; so that, [it’s like] ok, let's get on and deal with the business, because this is how you can position me and understand the packaging and the context and the nuance. And again, I thought that was a graceful way to approach that, right?
Noè I have to say, she's super, I mean, she's a lot more mature and graceful than I was at her age.
Zione I know, when you said she graduated in 2020, I'm sort of doing the maths and thinking, okay, yeah, very graceful. [And] very, very mature. She talked about identity as practice, which I thought was really, really interesting.
And I could understand why she was talking about it in that context because of how she's come to practice and understand and learn Yiddish. That's identity, but that's also her practising her identity. I really loved that. I'd never really sort of put the two things quite so articulately together.
Noè I thought it was also beautiful how she makes this statement that identity is also shaped, though, by how we are perceived. And I think that also signifies the generosity, but it also signifies the danger around us; and how we have to be really careful about how we project onto others.
We can be as generous as we want to by saying, I can see you and I relate to you on this level. And I also, as Anna very beautifully said, and I now respect you in another way, because I'm seeing this. But the flip side could be, you are no longer fitting the vision that I had of you as this type of person, you know? So it becomes hard.
Zione Yeah, so that could be the flip side too, that's right. But how about the person who's the recipient of the projection, it's very difficult. And I don't know where the line is. How do you then divorce yourself from other people's projections and perceptions?
Noè That's hard.
Zione Because you're constantly receiving it all the time, from everywhere, right? Like, she's getting it on social media and trolls and this, then and the other, and she's having to bat it away, right? Endlessly!
And to say: no, sorry, this is what I've carved for myself, thank you for your perception and perspective. I continue to carve this space for myself and own it and claim it. Because it is my own - thank you very much.
Noè And it is hard and I think it's for people who are skating multiple cultures and races, it's a very difficult place because you never solely belong to one. So you never see yourself reflected clearly or with any strength in [just the] one. So you're constantly having to juggle and battle exactly what we're talking about.
Then when you get into communities where there are multiple essences and identities within that - so Judaism is one of those - where there are fluctuations and cultural spectrums within that. It also becomes further complicated. So there within the Jewish community there are going to be levels of acceptance, within what that means to be Jewish. So then you have those sorts of levels that you're dealing with on top of a multi-racial identity.
So it does become hard. It does become complicated. But someone like Cameron, I feel has worked out a way to publicly claim [herself] and I think it's beautiful. She does it with song, she does it with humour, she does it with intelligence.
Zione So Noè gracefully shared one of her [Cameron’s] Instagram videos with me, right, where I saw her singing and I could see the generosity and the gracefulness and the humour with which she deals with this, right? I really really thought it was very very elegant. [I] really really like her very much.
Anna Yeah, I saw the strength in what someone like her, kind of the wisdom regardless of age, putting those very different and very special elements together in her life in her own terms. And I just had such an appreciation for that - even though I must confess I'm still digesting how a person can hold so much richness of content of one's culture and make it digestible. Like, I'm still sort of…
Zione And do it publicly!
Anna And do it publicly. I'm still like awestruck and a little bit, like, I don't quite get all of the content to be really honest, but it's that deep sense of appreciation that I got from her ability to do so.
And in that conversation with you, Noè , I now see that in you as well, which I don't think I fully appreciated before. And in some ways, it took listening to you have a conversation with someone like you for me to really, really get it. So thanks for your patience with the likes of us who are a bit clueless.
Zione Clueless, operating from our blind spots. That was graceful for you too, [Noè ].
Anna I feel like we're such grown-ups now. These interviews are really helping me feel more grown up and matured in the way I understand Australia. I understand the diversity and all of those dynamics. So deeply, deeply grateful.
Zione Thank you. Thanks, Anna. Thanks, Noè i. And thanks, Cameron!
Noè Thank you.
Thanks for listening to Like Us and SBS Audio Podcast. You can find more episodes at sbs .com .au /likeus and follow us in the SBS Audio app or wherever you get your podcast. Your hosts are me, Noè Harsel, Anna Yeon, Zione Walker-Nthenda. We are produced and engineered by Michael Burrows at Tomato Studios with support from the podcast team at SBS Audio.
Timestamp 13.45 Is 'music polls' a thing??
It's a correct word in the dictionary, but my first time hearing/writing it so make sure I get it right... timestamp 17.20.
Cameron is so smart! I'm like learning English as I transcribe.
I also looked up 'loans man'?? I may not know this English word...? Timestamp 21.45
