{"id":21,"date":"2014-12-01T12:11:25","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T12:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.armeniandiaspora.bujournalism.info\/?p=21"},"modified":"2014-12-01T12:11:25","modified_gmt":"2014-12-01T12:11:25","slug":"why-the-armenian-diaspora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/why-the-armenian-diaspora\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Armenian diaspora?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Through my\u00a0blog I want to explain my connection to this investigation and how my family are affected by the Armenian Diaspora. I will start by discussing my own experience in terms of the initial steps I took\u00a0to discover\u00a0my heritage and roots.\u00a0<\/em><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>For the first 18 years of my life being an Armenian in Britain wasn&#8217;t a very conscious part of my being. I grew up in Kent with my Essex born English mother and older sisters who had little desire to seek out their own non-English identity. My Israeli-Armenian father moved out when I was a baby and other than the fortnightly visits to his house, I was pretty oblivious to my foreign baggage.<\/p>\n<p>Growing up,\u00a0our\u00a0father would often try to encourage us\u00a0to visit Israel with him to meet\u00a0my Armenian\u00a0family there.<\/p>\n<p>Aged four or five I visited Israel,\u00a0meeting my father&#8217;s\u00a0family for the first time, including\u00a0my grandmother. It would prove to be the first and last time I met her as\u00a0another 12 years would pass until I visited again.<\/p>\n<p>Returning for a two week holiday when I was 17 I started to understand my roots a little more.<\/p>\n<p>Before starting university I\u00a0decided to travel to Israel and the wider Middle East for six months.<\/p>\n<p>During my travels I spent\u00a0Christmas, New Year and other holidays with my Israeli-Armenian family which had\u00a0a real impact on me and I began to seriously look into\u00a0the story of my family.\u00a0Slowly my\u00a0surname was becoming\u00a0more than just an interesting conversation point.<\/p>\n<p>These initial steps have paved the way for me to research my own background and roots. Through this project I hope to further that research and understanding, as well as telling the compelling story of the Armenian diaspora who are littered round the globe in their millions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Through my\u00a0blog I want to explain my connection to this investigation and how my family are affected by the Armenian Diaspora. I will start by discussing my own experience in terms of the initial steps I took\u00a0to discover\u00a0my heritage and roots.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[13,17,19,20,34,45,47,53,58,62,65],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-joe","4":"has-more-link","5":"post-21","7":"format-standard","8":"has-post-thumbnail","9":"category-my-story","10":"post_tag-armenia","11":"post_tag-armenian-diaspora","12":"post_tag-armenian-identity","13":"post_tag-armenian-republic","14":"post_tag-essex","15":"post_tag-israel","16":"post_tag-israel-armenian","17":"post_tag-kent","18":"post_tag-kibbutz","19":"post_tag-middle-east","20":"post_tag-nerssessian"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Qxwr-l","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bammj2015.buprojects.uk\/armeniandiaspora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}