It was one in the morning when Armenian artist-turned-baker Nana Manucharyan asked me to reschedule our meeting from 9:00 to 8:30 in the morning. Seven hours later I was waiting at her apartment, thinking my unanswered knocks at the door meant she was still asleep. It wouldn’t be surprising, I surmised, if she was—Nana, 29, was juggling two businesses during the pandemic and raising her son as a single parent. 

Ethnic Armenians whose families migrated to another part of the former Soviet Union can often find themselves confronting a question if they return to Armenia to live -- are they Diaspora or are they locals?