What happens when a new American citizen takes to the open road, traveling #Route66 from Chicago to Los Angeles?
Taking native son Saul Bellow as his literary inspiration, writer Aatish Taseer’s journey begins with a visit to the Chicago History Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the University of Chicago (which houses Saul Bellow’s papers) and Bellow’s old neighborhood of Humboldt Park. Here he discovers a city once at the junction of the Midwest, a city of industry and innovation which “grew faster than any city in America.”
With a narration both poetic and powerful, Taseer recounts his introspective journey along America’s “Mother Road”, raising some profound questions about history, identity, rootedness and belonging.
The full piece, which ran in the May 2025 issue of T: The New York Times Style Magazine, can also be accessed online here.
