San Diego, California

Communities of Difference Share a Final Resting Place:  Cultural diversity is a hallmark of this San Diego cemetery. In addition to languages like Armenian, Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese, headstones also mark the final resting places of first-generation Vietnamese immigrants. See the name of his birth city? It is just south of what used to be Saigon. With just these few facts, you are able to fit his life into the pageant of American history. Mount Hope Cemetery. [2020]

San Diego, California

Communities of Difference Share a Final Resting Place:  Cultural distinction often follows us to the grave. What are the markers of difference? Names, languages, alphabets, symbols, faces, So, often folks of feather are buried together. But, not here on the California coast. San Diego reveals its multicultural character in the spatial organization of at least one of its cemeteries. In few other places in the U.S. could you find a tableau like this, where four people of very different cultural origins are interred within a body-length of each other: four people, four languages, even four alphabets! To wit: Armenian, Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese. It is fairly easy to narrow down the national origin of the Arabic speaker: Why? Mount Hope Cemetery. [2020]