A Conversation with Amari Fecanji

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Born in 1984

Growing up under Uncle Enver in Communist-era Albania, it took an American to ask him for the first time what he thought about things. 

Amari Fecanji has lived many lives. As the hungry child of a struggling single mother, he queued in line for rationed food. As a teenager during his country’s chaotic shift to capitalism, he danced to Michael Jackson. And as a young gay man, he learned to rely on himself, rather than his deeply traditional society, in his search for acceptance and self-understanding.

It was an opportunity to study at an American university when things changed yet again. For the first time in his life, teachers asked his opinion. They cared what he thought, and what he had been through. 

Since then, Amari’s dedicated his life to working on behalf of other people whose opinions are rarely heard. As an LGBTQ+ activist, he’s lobbied for the economic inclusion of gender and sexual minorities in one of the most conservative parts of Europe. It’s work that eventually brought him to the United States, the country he says played a vital role in not only his personal education but also the democratic growing pains of Albania itself. The U.S. surprised him, in ways both good and bad. But nothing prepared him for the current assault on American democracy, and the rising extremism it’s stirring closer to home. He shares his advice on how to stay human in inhuman times. (Sometimes that means a side gig, like producing a series of soothing meditation videos.) 

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