You know how people in movies have places. Like their spot. To go and contemplate big ideas of the world. Or to just be.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never had a place before. I actually didn\u2019t really believe they happened in real life. But one day last week, after a particularly tiring day at work, I left and just drove. And ended up at my place.<\/p>\n
For so many months I have struggled with the question of \u201cwhy Detroit.\u201d Last year, I was working in a school, and I spent so much time and emotional energy there that I didn\u2019t have much time to think about things outside that space. But this year, through Challenge Detroit, I\u2019ve been exposed to so much more in this city – different sectors, organizations, people, conversations. While it has been a great learning opportunity, I\u2019ve also internally wrestled to find my place in these conversations.<\/p>\n
Between sitting in race discussions that are often framed in terms of black and white and meeting people with long histories of family ties to Detroit, I couldn\u2019t quite figure out where I fit in. Even though I grew up\u00a0right next\u00a0to the city, everything that I\u2019ve had close ties to occurred outside of Detroit – our temple in Farmington, family friends in Troy, my old middle school in Sterling Heights.\u00a0From a spot to get my eyebrows done to grocery shopping, the suburbs became what I naturally gravitated toward.<\/p>\n
The disconnect also stemmed\u00a0from not seeing that many familiar faces in the city. In my daily routine, I rarely pass another\u00a0South Asian – unless of course I\u2019m on Wayne State\u2019s medical campus or in the center of downtown\u2019s business district (unfortunately some stereotypes do persist). And so, whenever\u00a0I miss home or crave\u00a0great Indian food, I look outside the city.\u00a0But it isn’t just the lack of physical presence that\u00a0is disheartening\u00a0–\u00a0not hearing\u00a0those\u00a0voices\u00a0in\u00a0conversations about Detroit’s history or future makes it easy to\u00a0feel\u00a0separate from\u00a0the story\u00a0of this city.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not surprising, and in some ways it\u2019s a self imposed separation. I grew up in an immigrant community in metro Detroit where people came into the city to work and went straight back after. I still struggle to pitch Detroit to family and friends, many of whom have spent decades living less than an hour from here.<\/p>\n
Then I found my place. Literally and figuratively. That night, my spontaneous drive led me to right under the Ambassador bridge. And sitting there, watching the bridge light up as trucks crossed the border, something clicked in me.<\/p>\n
Its\u00a0sheer proximity to Canada would make it an international city. But beyond that, there are so many layers to Detroit\u2019s history.\u00a0From the immigrant small business owners that we interviewed to parents at Priest Elementary Middle School, the city is a huge cosmopolitan hub. And that isn’t always highlighted.<\/p>\n
I realized that night, that there is a place for me in Detroit.\u00a0While it may not always be as prominent in\u00a0discussions, there\u00a0are a\u00a0spectrum of ethnic communities that\u00a0have made Southeast Michigan their home. Their\u00a0presence in Detroit, or in some cases lack thereof, continues to shape the city in its own way. My personal goal for the year is to understand and highlight the\u00a0ways these diverse communities have made Detroit their home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You know how people in movies have places. Like their spot. To go and contemplate big ideas of the world. Or to just be. I\u2019ve never had a place before. I actually didn\u2019t really believe they happened in real life. But one day last week, after a particularly tiring day at work, I left and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":154,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-livedetroit","category-workdetroit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/154"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}