“Freedom” Abroad: An Interview on Expatriation to and Adventure in Portugal
Fatigued with the American cultures and systems of oppression and racism, novelist and poet Richard Wright left America for Paris in “voluntary exile” (Wright, 1). In his 1951 essay “I Choose Exile,” Wright explains his decision to “live beyond the shores of [his] native land,” writing that I love freedom...My decision [to move abroad] is predicated upon this simple fact: I need freedom. Yes, some people need more freedom than others, and I am one of them. Unless I feel free to let my instincts range, free to come and go as I please, free to probe and examine my environment, I languish, I wither, I die. In short, freedom, to me, is equated to concrete reality, to life; it is not something abstract, something to be won or hoped for; it is life itself, each day, each hour, each moment… (Wright, 1).
Within the sociopolitical and economic contexts of America, the possibility for freedom shrinked behind a culture of intolerance and white supremacy. For Wright, nothing more potent and vital existed than the ability for life without hindrance— all of the opportunities for leisure and personal liberty. Though Wright’s self-determination happened in 1947, shortly after the end of World War II, many of his reasons for expatriation still resonate among black Americans today in the twenty-first century. Starting after the Trump presidency in 2016, and most heightened in 2020 during the pandemic and after George Floyd’s murder, many Black Americans are opting for what they call “Blaxit,” an exodus out of the United States and towards an alternative future abroad (Coleman 2024).
Similarly inspired by adventure and a readiness to leave America, Dr. Audrey Tanner, writer and retired higher educational administrator, as well as my aunt, opted for her voluntary exit to Portugal in 2023. Her history and fervor for travel preceded her move to Portugal, as she often ventured abroad for yoga retreats and global exploration. Moved by Wright’s essay, as well as other past and contemporary texts and personal anecdotes from fellow Black expats, I wanted to further understand my aunt’s relationship with travel and experience abroad. What was her impetus for leaving over sixty years of familiarity and habit in America— and, did American culture and politics have any say in this reasoning? After sitting down in (virtual) conversation, I’ve learned that, for my aunt, her idea of adventure is similar to Wright’s vision and need for freedom.1 Life in Portugal offers her safety, community, creativity, and “psychological freedom” that she could not obtain in America: “I feel like I fit in here…I haven't always felt that I fit in places in the US”.
What is your relationship to travel, especially as an American? What inspires your travel?
So I think there's always been a sense of adventure about [travel], and seeing new places and meeting people, and seeing how other people live, and customs, and things like that. But I think
1 This interview has been edited for cohesion and clarity.
the biggest thing is traveling outside of the United States, specifically. Traveling within the United States doesn't do it for me, but traveling outside of the United States allows me to have a little bit of a reset and self reflection. So whenever I have come back from travel, I'm always more open, more tolerant about people’s differing views. Because if you travel and go to another country and just try to apply holding your values, it doesn't make for a very fun experience. But if you travel, embrace it, then you actually bring a piece of that back with you, too. So I've always gotten that out of it.
How would you describe your relationship with the United States as a black woman and also as a traveler?
Okay, so it's multi-layered. In the past, when I traveled, I didn't really think about the difficulty of coming back to the United States— now, I think about the difficulty of coming back to the United States. It would be really, really difficult to go live in the United States at this point in time, and for me as a human being, as an empathetic being, some of the stuff that's happening in the US is really, truly appalling to me. But that condition didn't exist in the past when I traveled. There were bad things, but it wasn't over-the-top bad the way it is right now. So there's that.
I feel like my relationship has changed because of the politics of the United States, and the conditions that people are more or less forced into at this point in time. You know, the socioeconomic conditions. It would be hard for me to go back to the US and afford to live in any of the places, except for Baltimore, that I've lived in previously because the economics of the country have changed so much. But besides that, the intolerance that's been happening [in the US] recently? Nothing I want a part of. So it's hard for me to think about coming back to the United States right now. It's very, very difficult. I actually moved because of the sense of adventure that was my primary motivation. I've always wanted to live in another country and be immersed in a culture, but the timing coincided with me thinking about the end of a career, and whether I wanted to try to get another job or whether I wanted to retire. So there was that timing. And then also, I was like, I don't want to go through another election cycle. So the timing was definitely not coincidental.
What is “adventure” to you, and how does adventure in Portugal differ from adventure in America?
I think having more time because I'm not working a full time job is part of [adventure] for sure, because it allows me to pursue things [I would not have]. Before, I would have driven to work, and I would have driven past buildings, and I would be so focused on work, I wouldn't be letting my imagination work on what's happening in that building. Or, look at the beauty of that building. Now, part of my sense of adventure can be as small as [walking] down the same street I walk down every single day here and I notice something about a building that I've never noticed before…And it's so cool. So, the retirement, and having the time to be able to do that is definitely a part of that sense of adventure.
But then the other big part for me is really just being in a different culture and getting to know the culture, learning a new language, just experiencing things in a much different way than I have had to experience them in the past. And getting to find a community of like minded people who feel the same thing— they're here for the adventure too.
How has finding community been for you? And what has that experience been like for you?
Porto reminds me a lot of Boston, because it's a city that is kind of small and it's got unique neighborhoods in it, but it's a cosmopolitan city. So it's easy to get around. English is widely spoken here. Like, if I go into a shop and I try to say something in Portuguese…if I get stuck with it, nine times out of ten the person on the other side of that conversation will be able to switch to fluent English with me. So English is widely spoken. So that's really, super helpful.
But then there are all of these networks for expats. I don't do Facebook for lots of reasons, but there are lots of groups on Facebook. I found one that has a big WhatsApp community. So there's all of these subgroups on WhatsApp, and people just post: here's the activity, We're all getting together to do this walk from this location to that location, or events, or whatever. So there's lots of opportunity to meet people. I was immediately able to meet people. Within the first week of being here I did not feel lonely at all because I've got a ton of events to go to, and I can pick and choose. And a year into that, now I've started to be a little bit more selective about what I do. But at the beginning, it was like, I'm just going to go to everything, because I don't know who I'm going to meet, and maybe I'll meet somebody who's going to become a good friend, or somebody who might know something that I need to know, or whatever. But then the expat network here is really, really strong, so the one thing I would say is that I haven't met a lot of people who are native to the city. I've started [to meet locals] after a year, but it's taken a little bit of time to move out of the expats into a more full community.
I don't know if this is relevant or not, but, but I do want to say this so I have met people whose primary motivation for being here is to get out of the United States. And they don't really have an interest in the culture. They just want to get out of the United States and be in a place where they might be able to replicate their United States experience. And that's not a successful approach for them. A lot of those people end up leaving really quickly, like within two years. The difference between coming for a sense of adventure and you might have all of those other things later on, or there's some other specific reason that you're coming, other than you want to get out of the US. I met a couple of people…like one woman I met, she just was like, “I'm not going to learn Portuguese, they're going to have to speak English to me.” And I'm, like, Whoa.
What made you choose Portugal out of other places?
So I actually started out with an open canvas. I was looking at places all over the world, and considering them. And as a single woman of color, I quickly discarded some countries… I quickly discarded everything in Asia, because I know what that experience is like from traveling
there as a single woman of color. I don't think I would have a comfortable experience there, so, [got] rid of that. And then it came down to a couple of countries in South America and a couple of countries in Europe. And then when I thought about it, I was like, actually, I like Europe a lot, so let me narrow it down there. It came down to France, Portugal and Spain. And then I started thinking about the cultures of those countries. And it was, it was really, really clear that Portugal was going to be a better fit for me, for a lot of reasons: friendliness. Portuguese people just figure things out, they're just seat-of-their-pants. Everything's a little bit flexible— the bureaucracy is horrible— but if I go into someplace…like, I've had the experience of [going somewhere] and not having the right paperwork to get something done, and [they say] “Okay, let's figure this out for you.” And they might pull out something and facilitate me being able to get the right paperwork right there. That doesn't happen in France, and it doesn't happen in Spain. So, there's a friendliness here that's super…that is different than the other two countries. Also, I wanted to be coastal, I wanted to be somewhere on an ocean.
Have you traveled to [Spain, France, etc.] regardless? I feel like you have a back door to Europe, and you can traverse and explore wherever you want to go. Is there that kind of mobility?
Oh absolutely, there is. I haven't traveled outside of Portugal yet because I really want to explore Portugal first before I go to other places. But Portugal is part of the EU, and the travel between any of the EU countries is really, really simple. So this is a good hub for being able to explore other places. Portugal first, and then I can go to other places.
Blackness is not a monolith; there's no one reason for black travel. Still, I have noticed a common theme of seeking out leisure, something that can be fraught in the US for numerous socioeconomic or geographic reasons. [Novelist] Richard Wright cites freedom as a main instigator for his travel. He says, “My decision to move abroad is predicated upon the simple fact I need freedom. Unless I feel free…I languish, I wither, I die”. Do you find that [sentiment] kind of true for you? And how do you experience freedom in Portugal?
I don't know that I really thought about it too much in that term [freedom]. I was really, really, more focused on, Let me find a place where I can spend the rest of my life. Right? Settle in and spend the rest of my life, and have a nice, nice retirement, and do the things. So I guess I was thinking about [freedom], I just wasn't calling it freedom, but doing the things that I want to pursue which includes writing, it includes yoga, it includes art, includes travel, all of those things. But those things were accessible to me in the US too. And if I had stayed there, I would have been able to do those things there too. But I think the difference is two things. One, as a single woman, Portugal is a pretty good place to live. There's a low crime rate. I still have to be careful about where I'm walking, because it is a city, and what time of night I'm walking. So there's a sense of safety that I feel that I definitely didn't feel in the US, and definitely did not feel when I was living in Baltimore. In Baltimore, I was always looking over my shoulder, and here,
I've walked by myself as late as, like, one or two in the morning, and it felt like I needed to be careful, but nobody's going to bother me. So there's that kind of freedom. There's the freedom associated with just feeling safer than I felt in the US. Before Baltimore, I lived in Oakland. Anybody with a brain would be concerned about making sure that they were in a safe environment at all times. Right? So there's safety.
There is the creative freedom of retirement too. So they go hand in hand, because now I have the time to pursue things that I love to do, and there's a deliberateness for me about pursuing those things that I really felt like I couldn't do before. So I guess that's freedom. There's a psychological freedom too, and the psychological freedom is really about…it’s about a couple of things. It's letting go of the stress that everything in the United States has. Everything's about work, and money, and getting from this place to that place, and going as fast as you can, and all the material trappings associated with that. And here, yeah, people dress well and drive nice cars, but they haven't lost the sense of compassion about living, and family, and community in the way that I think the United States has really actually started to.
So where am I going with that? I think there's this emotional freedom that I have here that I didn't have in the United States, and I think it's around those kinds of things. There's more of an ability to balance out the emotional and social life with feeling comfortable and safe. Also, I feel like I fit in here, you know. I haven't always felt that I fit in places in the US. So I definitely feel like I fit in here.
You're talking a lot about creative freedom. Where, and also how, do you find that for yourself? If you're writing more in Portugal, what would you draw your inspiration from?
I write poetry, and I have been actually working on some creative non-fiction, so some memoir type stuff. Recently, I'm actually getting ready to create a Substack. What I'm planning to put out on Substack, at least to start, are these little stories that I've written that are about the connections that people make with each other. An example was just the connection I made with the person who was selling me chestnuts. This non verbal communication that went on, it's really interesting to me because I'm learning Portuguese. I'm not really good at speaking it. I can read it pretty well at this point, but I'm not good at speaking it. And so what happens is I find myself in these situations where somebody is speaking Portuguese and what I think I'm hearing might be actually not what they're saying. But I'm still getting the gist of it. So I find myself making up conversations with people, even if I'm not actually talking with them.
Another example: I was on the train and I had this non-verbal communication going on with the person sitting across from me. There was some kind of drama going on in the train, and we're both looking at it, and looking at each other. I made up this whole this-is-the-conversation-we'rehaving kind of thing. So that's what I'm planning to put up in Substack. Being here has informed my writing in a lot of really positive ways I would say, is a way to sum it up, both in the
inspiration for poetry, but also now kind of thinking about how to tell those stories about human connection between people— those small, tiny little moments that could pass people by, but that happen every single day.
I remember when I was in [Greece], I felt like there was this big culture of more intimate connection with the people around you, especially people who are vending, or people who are selling on the side of the street or an open-air market. I know in New York there's a lot of that, but you kind of ignore it. I feel like in Europe, there are dedicated spaces to these [forms of community]. Is that when you are thinking about these moments of community?
The first time I walked through a park and there were guys sitting out there drinking on the bench, I was like, Oh, my God, I'm in a bad place. And then after the second or third time, I was like, They're not going to bother me, they're just sitting there having a good time with it. And so the American lens associated with that is people hanging out on the street or hanging out in the park, they're doing bad things. And here it's like, they might be doing bad things— I have actually seen some people doing drugs, but they're still not going to bother you because the culture is not the same.
And, I would say another thing that I actually, really, really love about Portugal— but at first, I was like, what?—is, if you walk into a shop and you need help with something, like I wanted to pick out hair color…so I was sitting there looking at the hair color, and one of the shop people came over and asked me if I needed to help. And I said, “I'm trying to decide.” And then all of a sudden, every single shop person was over there trying to help me. And so, yeah, it was hysterically funny, because they were like, “Well, this color would look really good with your skin tone.” I mean, it wasn't like, Here, you could choose between these two colors. It was like, let me really, actually help you and figure it out.
That kind of collective nature of things goes on all the time here. And I so love it. Nobody makes a decision by themselves. If you go into a shop, everybody gets involved. Or, like the example I gave you earlier, where I went in without the right form someplace. And it wasn't just like one person helping me, it was like three people came over and they're all having a conversation about the best way to get around the restrictions, and helping me while I'm there. That happens all the time here, and it's beautiful. It's one of the things I really, truly love about this culture.
Audrey Tanner, Ed. D., is an independent, multi-genre writer of short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. She holds a certificate in fiction writing from the University of California Los Angeles Extension. She is certified in teaching yoga, meditation, and Sanskrit mantra meditation. Audrey is also a Reiki master in the Usui lineage. A long-time higher education administrator who holds a doctorate in higher education leadership, Audrey served in university leadership for more than 30 years.
Her poetry collections So Many Ways To Say What Is: Poems For the Exploration of Spiritual Self and River Dream are both available for purchase.
For more information, please visit audreytannerwrites.com.
Works Cited
Coleman, Colette. “Blaxit: Tired of Racism, Black Americans Try Life in Africa.” The New York Times. February 16 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/realestate/africanamericans-africa.html.
Wright, Richard. “I Choose Exile.” 1951.