For many, understanding your heritage and finding your way back to the core of your being can feel daunting. Figuring out where to start and if you will feel some sense of connection can feel like a big undertaking. What happens if you don’t feel like you belong? How do you fill a gap in belonging when you don’t know where to begin? The answer - use your curiosity and make it easy.

In this episode, I talk with Jessica De Anda about her journey to digging into her Ecuadorian and Mexican heritage to understand her past, ground in her present, and light the path for her future, all while using what she uncovers along the way to find community and help others.





EP. 5 - Finding Home in Ancestral Heritage

Music has the ability to bring us all together. For some, hip-hop is where it all started in the Boogie Down Bronx with the Black and Latino community. At some point a split happened and our guest on this episode wants to foster reconnection between these communities for the love of hip-hop culture. But how can that happen with the Latino community is so divided itself? In this episode, Community Director and Hip-Hop Cultural Specialist Jeffrey Roe talks about how he found belonging, barriers to reconnection between the Black and Latino community, and how hip-hop just might help bridge the gap.

EP. 2: U.N.I.T.Y. - Hip-Hop, Reconnection, and the Latinx Community

In the pilot episode of the podcast, Marjorie Anderson and Carol Martinez sit down in conversation to explore how connection and belonging showed up for them through their lives, how it has shaped their interactions with those closest to them, and how cultural traditions and customs continue to shape their community and the future.

Ep. 1: Coming from Where I'm From

Welcome to Connecting Across the Diaspora, where we explore the profound impact that the vibrant customs and traditions of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous cultures have had on how we care for one another now and in the future. Join us as we bring together voices that tell the stories of how our cultures impact the way we nurture real human connections.

Trailer: Coming Soon! Connecting Across the Diaspora Podcast

Industries talk about community and belonging as if it is a new concept. The truth is, for thousands of years humans have operated in community. To gather food. To raise children. To survive. And yet the stories of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous customs that have facilitated how we think about belonging and connection often get overlooked, discredited, or all together ignored. Connecting Across the Diaspora aims to create space for others to share the customs and traditions that fostered strong communities long before we formally defined them, and that continue to fuel how we care for one another each day.

Marjorie Anderson

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