SALT LAKE CITY, UT July 26, 2018
In 1960, at the age of fourteen, Albert Badre emigrated from Beirut, Lebanon, to the United States with his family. Over the years, Albert struggled to become a successful American and aspired to make a lasting intellectual impact on the world.
“I initially struggled socially as an immigrant teenager with limited English-language skills. Making friends, learning new customs, and adapting to a very different culture were difficult and frustrating. In addition, my family had been well known and socially privileged in Beirut; in America, we were unknown nobodies. Still, I was inspired and excited by the opportunities available to me in America, and I plowed ahead, determined to make friends and contribute to my new home. Even as I struggled socially, I read voraciously, becoming increasingly interested in religion and philosophy.”
In the process, he became a convert to the Catholic Church. “My burgeoning Catholic faith only further inspired my desire to make a meaningful contribution to my new American home.”
Badre’s complex coming-of-age journey, “Looking West,” now under contract with WiDo’s imprint, E.L. Marker, spans the period between the late 1950s and August 1974, when he returned to Lebanon for the first time, with his American bride.
Karen Gowen, WiDo’s Managing Editor, has this to say about the memoir: “Albert has written a timely story about his immigration to the U.S. from Lebanon. The dialogue is compelling and real. You get immediately caught up into the family’s life and journey.”
When his father passed away in 2010 at the age of 98, the family found letters written to him during their first three years in America. During these years, his father lived in the Congo, working for the United Nations as Economics Advisor for the Congo operation to The UN Secretary General.
“My mother wrote to him almost every day telling him about our life in Albany, where we spent our first years in America,” recalls Badre. “Reading those letters triggered memories of our immigration from Beirut. It motivated me to write the memoirs, first for my family, and also for those interested in the life of an immigrant to the United States.”
Badre found information about the WiDo Family of Publishers on the Internet. He was impressed with how WiDo promotes and supports its authors. “Also, with WiDo’s focus on and track record of publishing excellent memoirs, I felt that if they agreed to publish mine, it would be in good company.”
The author has plans to work on another manuscript about his spiritual journey. In “Looking West” he talks a little bit about his spiritual conversion, but he wants to expand on that story to the present day.
“Throughout my story, I walk many paths, seeking to become an American, to embrace and live an authentic and meaningful Catholic life, and to live a life of the mind that will contribute to others. My journeys are all connected, and none could be possible without the others.”
Dr. Badre and his wife recently moved to Providence, R.I. where their son is a professor at Brown, to spend quality time with their son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. In service to the community, he has led a very active volunteer life, organizing food for the hungry, serving in meal kitchens, leading Bible studies, serving on a parish school executive board, and organizing parish community spiritual activities.
The author enjoys reading memoirs, true stories, theology and philosophy books, and occasionally, a good novel, where “I can lose myself in a fantasy world.”
Dr. Albert N. Badre (PhD, University of Michigan, 1973) is a professor emeritus at Georgia Institute of Technology and an international consultant specializing in designing technology to enhance the human experience. He is an early pioneer in the field of human-computer interaction. Prior to retiring, Dr. Badre had been a frequent consultant to and lecturer in the information and computing technology industries in the United States, Europe, and South America.
Dr. Badre was the founding Director of the MS Degree Program in Human Computer Interaction at Georgia Tech. This was the first interdisciplinary HCI Program worldwide. The Program was featured in the 2003 U.S. News and World Report Issue on Best Colleges and was attracting hundreds of applications per year.
He is on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=12819942 and Twitter, @anbadre.