For Karina Zapata – creator and host of The Second Gen podcast – podcasting was never a medium she saw herself in when she started in journalism.
“Audio and visual was like my worst nightmare ever. And I never thought that I would ever want to create a podcast,” she said.
Speaking on The Making Of: The Second Gen with Karina Zapata, Zapata explained how she had been sitting on the idea of delving into the experiences of first-generation Canadians for a while. When the opportunity came to become the Community Podcast Initiative’s first podcaster-in-residence, she began to see podcasting as the best way to materialize her idea.
“I – over the last year – fell in love with audio storytelling, and I realized that there’s just so much potential, especially when hearing those first-person stories and just having the time to come together and really dive into a topic,” she said.
The Second Gen is a six-part series, exploring the experiences of children of immigrants, who have a unique understanding of what it means to constantly move between cultures. Not only must they support their parents who immigrated from their home countries, but they also must navigate their own identities and roles.
The show dives into a range of topics, exploring what it’s like to be the eldest child of immigrant parents, recovering one’s heritage language and managing living up to parental expectations. Other episodes delve into the importance of mental health, reconciling queer identities with traditional values and grappling with the effects of colonization.
While every episode incorporates a diverse mix of voices – first-generation Canadians from Alberta, Ontario and even the Northwest Territories – Zapata feels each story reflects connectedness over contrast.
“It’s funny because no matter where you live, where you are, how you grew up – despite those different experiences – there’s still so much that you can relate to,” she said. “It honestly was a part where I learned a lot about my experiences as well through other people.”
Being able to reflect on her own life as a child of immigrants is something Zapata said she’ll take from the series moving forward.
“I found it was a really healing process in figuring out how being a child of immigrants really impacts every single part of my life, but also just being in a room – whether it was virtual or in this studio – talking to people about the experience.”
