As an Armenian immigrant to the United States via Russia, cultural and ethnic difference has always been a key part of my consciousness. Like many other New Yorkers, the story of where I come from is complicated. I was born in Moscow and I speak, think, read and write in Russian, although I am not a Russian citizen. Ethnically, I am one hundred percent Armenian and I came to the U.S. with my mother as refugees, escaping violence and ethnic conflict in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Both my parents, while ethnically Armenian, were born and raised in cultural centers of the Soviet Union – Moscow and Baku – where they suffered persecution and displacement. My own childhood memories of Russia were vague: I remember a small apartment and being constantly surrounded by Russian speaking family, all cramped into our tiny room. When we moved to America in 1993, the culture shock was immense. We were struck by a world defined by individualism, money and opportunity, but more importantly – much to the alarm of my mother – by the fact that no one had even heard about the ethnic conflicts in Azerbaijan. No one in the U.S. seemed to know of the violent protests, burnings, and pogroms, or of the thousands of refugees forced to flee. We made a foreign nest in Brooklyn where it was as if our family history had never happened.

In 2012, I took a trip to Baku, where my parents were both born. It was not until I visited the site where an Armenian cemetery once stood that I felt a renewed connection to my heritage. Right on the site of the cemetery was a newly constructed highway. There was no indication of the pogroms my mother had escaped from so many years ago, not even a flower dedicated to those whose lives were so dramatically changed or lost. The sadness and utter shock at this emptiness connected me to my roots more so than anything I had ever felt. I began to appreciate what it meant to live in the U.S, where I can maintain a cultural identity as an Armenian-American without fear of persecution or erasure.

I consider myself lucky to now live in a country where I can express and embrace the Russian, Armenian and American parts of myself, a privilege my mother and father did not have. My cultural connection to the past flows through my family, our history and our suffering. But more importantly, it gives me insight into other cultures’ struggles, specifically the challenges entailed in immigration to a new country. An awareness of where I have come from has strengthened my commitment to the belief that civil liberties should be afforded without any regard to one’s race, religion, class, or ethnicity.