Khushali Haji
Khushali Haji-2024 Dennis Duggan Award Winner
By David A. Andelman
When Khushali Haji first arrived in New York City from her native Ahmedabad, India, to study journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, she confesses she was lost.
"Far from the lifelong relationships and routes that I'd left behind, I felt everyone in the city sort of knew what they were doing," she said to a luncheon meeting of the Silurian Press Club, which presented her with a a coveted journalism scholarship, the Dennis Duggan Award. "They walked in confident strides and more or less knew what was going on for them. Even small things like making small talk, mispronouncing words was nerve-racking for me from the beginning."
That didn't last long. Because from the first, she began looking for stories among those people who she quickly found shared many of her own anxieties, even fears.
"It was this alienation, this insecurity and feeling of being misrepresented that I tried to look for in communities that might be experiencing the same thing," she said. "What I've learned since then through my peers and my studies at the J-school is that within stories are layers of good and bad, of anxieties and outrage, of misunderstandings and desires. The exchanges and discussions I've had have taught me to report on the people I meet with empathy and not sympathy, with openness and not vilification."
Her reporting took her to any number of these communities. In Kensington, in Brooklyn "a diverse neighborhood with long-standing and adjacent South Asian Muslim and Jewish communities," she found her way to Jalsa, where "an Indian buffet and warm chai led 18 Jewish and Muslim musicians to vent about the difficulty of finding space for jamming sessions."
Haji explained the context of her story published in The Brooklyn Paper in February 2024. "Set against the backdrop of increasing violence in the Palestine-Israel conflict, a dispute between predominantly Muslim and Jewish communities, the lunch brought together musicians of the two faiths to discuss and create music. Community organizers aim to make this a precursor to upcoming gatherings that unite the neighborhood in 2024."
Jill Reiner, founder of Singing Winds, a multi-lingual storytelling program in Kensington, who attended the lunch told Haji, "Music transcends language barriers. And there are so many common roots. If you listen to Israeli and Arabic music, there are even similar beats!”
These textures and deep understanding she brought to stories of New York's kaleidoscope of immigrant communities that she contributed to The Brooklyn Paper as well as Documented and Newsroom, and beyond—to her summer internship this year at New Narratives in Monrovia, Liberia. All of her writings and talent clearly motivated her teachers at the Newmark school to nominate her for this award.
"In the midst of the tragic conflicts around the world that we're seeing unfold today, grappling with complex and layered stories seems as important as ever," she told the Silurians gathered at the National Arts Club, "and especially given our privilege as writers and storytellers. If there's anything that the people I've reported on taught me, is not to give up when you're told you should—both for yourself and on the other side all those you could impact."
David A. Andelman, a former New York Times and CBS News correspondent, was a Silurians president, and writes SubStack's Andelman Unleashed.
