COLUMBIA, Md. — Sarah Lutterodt’s eventful life spans multiple cultures — Black/White, American/British, Western/African, academia/business — and her experiences have opened her eyes to the assumptions and attitudes, deeply rooted in childhood, that too often separate people from one another.
“No one has the capacity to live in an unboundaried world,” Lutterodt writes in her new book, Worlds Apart: A Memoir of Uncertain Belonging. “The scale is too vast, our need for security too great. But we can live with more awareness of our blinders and with compassion for those in other worlds.”
Worlds Apart invites readers to join Lutterodt on her compelling journey, from a sheltered post-war childhood on a farm in southern England to her life-changing years teaching university in Ghana, followed by her challenging immersion in the rough and tumble of the American business world.
With her husband, a Ghanaian mathematician, she struggles to find a place for her biracial family in a 1980s America that isn’t always welcoming.
In retirement, Lutterodt lives between two worlds: a newly experienced Ghana and an America for whom Africa too often remains the “dark continent.”
While the memoir tells stories from each chapter of Lutterodt’s life, the underlying themes are of identity and belonging, and the joys and challenges in living at the interface between different cultures — recognizing boundaries to be navigated while seeking to build bridges of understanding.
In reflecting on her life’s journey, Lutterodt has drawn inspiration from the teachings of the renowned Franciscan friar Richard Rohr. Echoing the title of his seminal work, Everything Belongs, she concludes, “I am grateful to have experienced moments when a boundary that separates my life from others has become porous, illuminated by the bonds of our common humanity.”
About the Author
Sarah Lutterodt was born and educated in England, gaining a BA degree in physics from the University of Oxford, an M.Phil. in nuclear physics from the University of London and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Birmingham. She has spent most of her adult life outside England, working for two years at the University of Lovanium in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and subsequently at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. It was there that she met her husband, Clement, a Ghanaian mathematician with whom she has three children. In 1980, the family moved to the United States, where Lutterodt worked as a technical training consultant for General Physics Corporation before starting her own business, Quality Training Systems, in 1997. Now in retirement, she and Clement divide their time between their homes in Columbia, Maryland, and Accra, Ghana.
Connect with the author on LinkedIn: Sarah Lutterodt Ph.D.