Blossom Foster

Blossom Foster is a reader, writer, teacher and scholar. She works between texts and people to open up space for new stories, to shelter stories that might otherwise fade away, and to make sure we know the price of the stories we repeat the most often. She has lived in the US, Papua New Guinea, Central African Republic, the UK, Denmark and Germany, where she did her PhD and currently holds a Heisenberg Fellowship. Her work, in and out of the academy, focuses on narrative, the body, and learning. She started writing creative non-fiction like the above in a search for a non-colonialist and non-patriarchal way of writing history.

Get real help: migrant advising in Leipzig

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"Migrating is heavy business. There's a lot of uncertainty and stress and systems you don't understand but have to grapple with. The first thing I teach people I'm mentoring is: always use all of your resources."

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Interview: Your demons travel with you

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Blossom Foster interviews psychologist Demetris Nicolaides: "In the situation of adjusting to life in Germany, people’s history with their family, their problems with anxiety, self-esteem, whatever, are going to be coming up."

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Getting Along in Germany: Privacy

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"Have you found it difficult to make friends with Germans? Do you feel like your neighbors are indifferent and standoffish? Do you worry that people here don't seem to like you very much? Then let me introduce you to the German core value of privacy."

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Getting Along in Germany: Service

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"It's like trying to play frisbee with someone who is trying to play checkers." In this series, Blossom Foster addresses key aspects of getting along in German culture, focusing on some pet peeves of internationals as well as typical points of misunderstanding and frustration.

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Lou-Lou and the bomb left behind

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"Those ten yards from the bomb to my front door are the path home when I get off a number 12 tram. Now those are Lou-Lou's yards, yards and time and unburned buildings that belong to whoever pulled the lever too soon and whoever wired that bomb too loosely."

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