Liana Aghajanian, a Los Angeles journalist and essayist moving to Detroit soon as the second Write A House literary residency winner, reflects on her immigrant heritage in a new commentary.
"When you are a child of displacement, you can never forget that feeling," the Iranian-born writer describes in the Glendale News-Press, a suburban daily published by the Los Angeles Times.
It is the feeling of uneasiness, or unevenness, of imbalance, of never quite knowing where you belong, where parts of you feel scattered across countries and borders, half here, half there and many other places in between.
Liana Aghajanian: "It is a very strange feeling to be the child of refugees in the United States." (Facebook photo)
The 30-year-old's opinion page contribution, published on Thanksgiving eve, has an obvious relevance now.
As I watched officials in the United States seek to block the admission of 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016, that hollow core felt even more empty. . . .
It is a very strange feeling to be the child of refugees in the United States and watch as that same country attempts to deny refugees the same changes it gave you. . . .
I am a child of refugees, not once or twice, but countless times throughout the existence of my people. One hundred years ago, countries such as Syria, France and yes, the United States, welcomed Armenian refugees fleeing genocide.
Since then, we have been uprooted, leaving countries and circumstance, trying to rebuild our lives only to be uprooted again.
When you are the child of refugees, living in a country that has historically accepted refugees to its shores, the story is ingrained in your veins, and the human obligation to pay attention to what is unfolding in a world where forced displacement has topped 50 million is impossible to ignore.
Aghajanian, who plans to arrive in January, was chosen this fall by the nonprofit Write A House group to live for two years in a northeast Detroit home it renovated.
-- Alan Stamm
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