From Doner Kebabs to Pine Cones: A Detroit Journalist Finds Out What “Tradition” Means for Americans Today
The New York Times sent four journalists and photographers, guided by four themes, to document what America looks like in 2019. One of the journalists was Liana Aghajanian, a Detroit-based writer.
Recently, The New York Times sent four journalists and photographers, guided by four themes (patriotism, tradition, community, and youth) to document what America looks like in 2019
One of the journalists was Liana Aghajanian, a Detroit-based writer whose assignment took her from a Bosnian café in Hamtramck to the heart of New Hampshire on a journey in search of what tradition means in our nation today.
“Except for Michigan, I had never been to any of the states that we ended up going to. So it was a very new experience for me,” Aghajanian says.
She says the trip opened her eyes to a different side of America. “It was a very new experience for me, as somebody who came to this country as a refugee myself, to discover a part of American that I really didn’t know too intimately,” she says.
“I think the takeaway from that experience would be that there’s a lot of uncertainty in America. That was a running theme. A lot of people feel very unheard.” – Liana Aghajanian
Click the audio player to hear CultureShift’s Amanda LeClaire’s conversation with Aghajanian.
Read Aghajanian’s full story here.
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