As a child, I had a little group of international friends that I played with in the courtyard of the married student housing at Stanford University where my father James Gerdeen studied for his PhD. My parents mention how I loved my collection of friends from all over the world.
When we moved to the Midwest, I longed to find a friend with color. So, imagine how thrilled I was to make a friend from India in seventh grade, to come alongside Hmong refugee in Minnesota, to love orphans in Haiti, and to live among the Lakota Sioux and the Mongolians of Central Asia. Culture is the air I breathe, and networking with my international friends is my food. Without them, I would starve.
My husband Bill and I make ourselves at home in warm and woodsy Missouri, where I have gone back to teaching reading and writing to immigrants in the public school system. What joy!
As a personal historian, I am available for consulting on YOUR life story, and would consider it a privilege to speak to your group of writers or readers of culture.
Lori Younker
author–personal historian–speaker
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