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FREE BOOK: Healing America Begins with You: Bridging Cultural Gaps - Composer Sabrina Pena Young

Healing America Begins with You: Bridging Cultural Gaps - Composer Sabrina Pena Young

A way we can help heal our society: 
rainbow children
Sculpture by Marie Uchytilova

Take the time to make at least three meaningful relationships with individuals of other cultures. The type of relationship where you go to each other's houses for meals, call when you have a rough day, have playdates and go camping together. 

When your idea of a cultural group is based on a relationship and not movies, TV, the #news, or Twitter, you will avoid falling into the trap of lumping individuals together into stereotypes. You will be able to recognize the nuances and individualism that makes each person unique and responsible for themselves, not an entire people group. 

BREAKING CULTURAL STEREOTYPES


I have had my own cultural stereotypes broken by moving around the country, being involved in communities that I would have never been a part of. I am wiser for it. I have more empathy because of it. 




LEARNING TO LISTEN

Next time, when you hear someone making a comment about a particular people group, ask your close friend of that group what THEY think about the comment. And LISTEN. And if you only base your opinion on that group on what a news station or Twitter says because you have no close authentic relationships with people in that group, then it may be time to broaden your social circle. 

Don't worry if this feels uncomfortable at first. Many of us live as the "other" in our own hometowns. It's okay. You will survive. Blessings. Feel free to share. We have to start the healing somewhere. And it can start with you. 

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"Wagner 2.0" award-winning Cuban American composer Sabrina Peña Young creates "groundbreaking" works like her animated opera Libertaria and Destiny: Eondwyr. Young authored the dystopian Libertaria Chronicles and Composer Boot Camp 101, a workbook for musicians and educators. Works presented at TEDxBuffalo,  Beijing Conservatory, Art Basil Miami, international film festivals, Turkey's Cinema for Peace, Opera America NYC. A Futuristic Music Anthology: The Electroacoustic Mind of Sabrina Peña Young album provides a broad spectrum from early experimental sound synthesis to lush orchestral soundtracks that evoke the best of sci-fi dystopia. She is scoring for the film The Present and the Passed, and finishing production on the animated sci-fi film Spiritus. 

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