Xenophilia, a note from summer

from STUDIO WORROM's Thoughts on Things

Hey there, 

Welcome back to the newsletter from STUDIO WORROM, serving you monthly hits of my POV on culture so you can form yours.

This summer, I had the privilege of working from Greece for a month. In case that sentence wasn’t pretentious enough, I took the time there to re-read the Odyssey, and was excited to find that it had for the first time been translated into English by a woman - Emily Wilson. 

In her thoughtful statements about her translation, she said something that has stuck with me.

She notes that while xenophobia, the hostile fear of strangers, is on the rise, we should instead choose to place more focus on a central theme in the Odyssey: xenophilia, the love of strangers. 

As an American expat in The Netherlands with an Italian wife, a large majority of my adult life has been spent in and around cultures that are not my own. Despite the current global context, I find it deeply hopeful that this destructive word - xenophobia - has a non-evil twin. That nestled within our fear of others, lies the possibility to embrace and love their culture instead. 

And that there’s a word for it, xenophilia, that we can make more prevalent than xenophobia if we choose.

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Here are three things I liked on the internet this month:

-The Pop Song That’s Uniting India and Pakistan

-Adults at the NY Times try to make sense of the rise of Catholicism with the Dimes Square youths

-Rachel Maddow is gearing up for her next big move, and looking queer as ever doing it, which we love to see.

As always, it’s been a pleasure, and thanks for subscribing.

Until next month!

Steph