We Are All Armenian

We Are All Armenian PDF Author: Aram Mrjoian
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477326812
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
A collection of essays about Armenian identity and belonging in the diaspora. In the century since the Armenian Genocide, Armenian survivors and their descendants have written of a vast range of experiences using storytelling and activism, two important aspects of Armenian culture. Wrestling with questions of home and self, diasporan Armenian writers bear the burden of repeatedly telling their history, as it remains widely erased and obfuscated. Telling this history requires a tangled balance of contextualizing the past and reporting on the present, of respecting a culture even while feeling lost within it. We Are All Armenian brings together established and emerging Armenian authors to reflect on the complications of Armenian ethnic identity today. These personal essays elevate diasporic voices that have been historically silenced inside and outside of their communities, including queer, multiracial, and multiethnic writers. The eighteen contributors to this contemporary anthology explore issues of displacement, assimilation, inheritance, and broader definitions of home. Through engaging creative nonfiction, many of them question what it is to be Armenian enough inside an often unacknowledged community.

We Are All Armenian

We Are All Armenian PDF Author: Aram Mrjoian
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477326812
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
A collection of essays about Armenian identity and belonging in the diaspora. In the century since the Armenian Genocide, Armenian survivors and their descendants have written of a vast range of experiences using storytelling and activism, two important aspects of Armenian culture. Wrestling with questions of home and self, diasporan Armenian writers bear the burden of repeatedly telling their history, as it remains widely erased and obfuscated. Telling this history requires a tangled balance of contextualizing the past and reporting on the present, of respecting a culture even while feeling lost within it. We Are All Armenian brings together established and emerging Armenian authors to reflect on the complications of Armenian ethnic identity today. These personal essays elevate diasporic voices that have been historically silenced inside and outside of their communities, including queer, multiracial, and multiethnic writers. The eighteen contributors to this contemporary anthology explore issues of displacement, assimilation, inheritance, and broader definitions of home. Through engaging creative nonfiction, many of them question what it is to be Armenian enough inside an often unacknowledged community.

We Armenians Survived!: Battle of Marash 1920

We Armenians Survived!: Battle of Marash 1920 PDF Author: Ellen Sarkisian Chesnut
Publisher: Ellen Sarkisian Chesnut
ISBN: 9781733015905
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
We Armenians Survived! The Battle of Marash,1920 is an unbelievable story of luck and the life affirming instincts of Armenians, including the author's family, who not only survived this devastating battle but grew to find more strength, after being enmeshed in one of the more brutal genocidal events within the larger period of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923 in Turkey.The Battle of Marash was one of the last major campaigns in the Turkish struggle for independence from 1919-1923 which subjected Armenians and other Christian people to unimaginable levels of hatred, brutality, violence and psychological trauma by Turks and Kurds.These Armenian survivors' stories depict also how they overcame their brutal history-to various extents-via diaspora and rebirth across continents. Their personal stories, lives, and denouements are a heartening tribute to acknowledging world history and human wrongs.

The Spirit of the Laws

The Spirit of the Laws PDF Author: Taner Akçam
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782386246
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Pertinent to contemporary demands for reparations from Turkey is the relationship between law and property in connection with the Armenian Genocide. This book examines the confiscation of Armenian properties during the genocide and subsequent attempts to retain seized Armenian wealth. Through the close analysis of laws and treaties, it reveals that decrees issued during the genocide constitute central pillars of the Turkish system of property rights, retaining their legal validity, and although Turkey has acceded through international agreements to return Armenian properties, it continues to refuse to do so. The book demonstrates that genocides do not depend on the abolition of the legal system and elimination of rights, but that, on the contrary, the perpetrators of genocide manipulate the legal system to facilitate their plans.

The Armenians

The Armenians PDF Author: Edmund Herzig
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135798362
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
A comprehensive introduction to the historical forces and recent social and political developments that have shaped today's Armenian people. With contributions from leading Armenian, American and European specialists, the book focuses on identity formation, exploring how the Armenians' perceptions of themselves and their place in the world are informed by their history, culture and present-day situation. The book also covers contemporary politics, economy and society, and relates these to ongoing debates over future directions for the Armenian people, both in the homeland and in the diaspora communities.

The Knock at the Door

The Knock at the Door PDF Author: Margaret Ahnert
Publisher: Beaufort Books
ISBN: 0825305535
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
In 1915, Armenian Christians in Turkey were forced to convert to Islam, barred from speaking their language, and often driven out of their homes as the Turkish army embarked on a widespread campaign of intimidation and murder. In this riveting book, Margaret Ajemian Ahnert relates her mother Ester's terrifying experiences as a young woman during this period of hatred and brutality. At age 15, Ester was separated from her family during a forced march away from her birth town of Amasia. Though she faced unspeakable horrors at the hands of many she met, and was forced into an abusive marriage against her will, she never lost her faith, quick wit, or ability to see the good in people. Eventually she escaped and emigrated to America. Ahnert's compelling account of her mother's suffering is framed by an intimate portrait of her relationship with her 98-year-old mother. Ester's inspiring stories, told lovingly by her daughter, will give you a window into the harrowing struggle of Armenians during a terrible period in human history.

There Was and There Was Not

There Was and There Was Not PDF Author: Meline Toumani
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0805097635
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist: A young Armenian-American moves to Istanbul to confront questions of history, loyalty, and loving your enemy. Meline Toumani grew up in a close-knit Armenian community in New Jersey where Turkish restaurants were shunned and products made in Turkey were boycotted. The source of this enmity was the Armenian genocide of 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish government, and Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge it. A century onward, Armenian and Turkish lobbies spend hundreds of millions of dollars to convince governments, courts, and scholars of their clashing versions of history. Frustrated by her community’s all-consuming campaigns for genocide recognition, Toumani leaves a promising job at the New York Times and moves to Istanbul. Instead of demonizing Turks, she sets out to understand them, and in a series of extraordinary encounters over the course of four years, she tries to talk about the Armenian issue, finding her way into conversations that are taboo and sometimes illegal. Along the way, we get a snapshot of Turkish society in the throes of change, and an intimate portrait of a writer coming to terms with the issues that drove her halfway across the world. In this far-reaching quest, Toumani probes universal questions: how to belong to a community without conforming to it, how to acknowledge a tragedy without exploiting it, and most importantly how to remember a genocide without perpetuating the kind of hatred that gave rise to it in the first place. “Although this book offers plenty of insight—funny, affectionate, often frustrated—into a unique diasporic culture, Toumani is ultimately less interested in what makes a person Armenian, Turkish or anything else than in what can happen when we start to think beyond those national identities.” —The Washington Post “A remarkable memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “An unusual book: courageous, intriguing, and at moments, despite its subject, unexpectedly funny. And [Toumani’s] determination to understand and put behind her a century of hatred has echoes for more peoples than just Turks and Armenians.” —Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918 “This deft combination of political and personal narrative is an attempt to cross one of the modern world’s most sensitive divides. With warmth and feeling, it shows why so many people and nations are imprisoned by the past, and what can happen when they set themselves free.” —Stephen Kinzer, author of Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds

The History of Armenia

The History of Armenia PDF Author: S. Payaslian
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230608582
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
There is a great deal of interest in the history of Armenia since its renewed independence in the 1990s and the ongoing debate about the genocide - an interest that informs the strong desire of a new generation of Armenian Americans to learn more about their heritage and has led to greater solidarity in the community. By integrating themes such as war, geopolitics, and great leaders, with the less familiar cultural themes and personal stories, this book will appeal to general readers and travellers interested in the region.

A House in the Homeland

A House in the Homeland PDF Author: Carel Bertram
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503631656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
A powerful examination of soulful journeys made to recover memory and recuperate stolen pasts in the face of unspeakable histories. Survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 took refuge across the globe. Traumatized by unspeakable brutalities, the idea of returning to their homeland was unthinkable. But decades later, some children and grandchildren felt compelled to travel back, having heard stories of family wholeness in beloved homes and of cherished ancestral towns and villages once in Ottoman Armenia, today in the Republic of Turkey. Hoping to satisfy spiritual yearnings, this new generation called themselves pilgrims—and their journeys, pilgrimages. Carel Bertram joined scores of these pilgrims on over a dozen pilgrimages, and amassed accounts from hundreds more who made these journeys. In telling their stories, A House in the Homeland documents how pilgrims encountered the ancestral house, village, or town as both real and metaphorical centerpieces of family history. Bertram recounts the moving, restorative connections pilgrims made, and illuminates how the ancestral house, as a spiritual place, offers an opening to a wellspring of humanity in sites that might otherwise be defined solely by tragic loss. As an exploration of the powerful links between memory and place, house and homeland, rupture and continuity, these Armenian stories reflect the resilience of diaspora in the face of the savage reaches of trauma, separation, and exile in ways that each of us, whatever our history, can recognize.

The Traveller & His Road

The Traveller & His Road PDF Author: Kostan Zarean
Publisher: New York : Ashod Press
ISBN:
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description


Orhan's Inheritance

Orhan's Inheritance PDF Author: Aline Ohanesian
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 161620530X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
When Orhan’s brilliant and eccentric grandfather, Kemal Türkoglu, who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs, is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the decades-old business. But Kemal has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away, an aging woman in a retirement home in Los Angeles. Intent on righting this injustice, Orhan unearths a story that, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which Orhan’s family is built, a story that could unravel his own future. “Breathtaking and expansive . . . Proof that the past can sometimes rewrite the future.” —Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train “Stunning . . . At turns both subtle and transcendent.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “To take the tumultuous history of Turks and Armenians in the early part of this century, and to tell the stories of families and lovers from the small everyday moments of life to the terrible journeys of death, to make a novel so engrossing and keep us awake—that is an accomplishment, and Aline Ohanesian’s first novel is such a wonderful accomplishment.” —Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon “Rich, tragic, compelling, and realized with deep care and insight.” —Elle “A book with a mission, giving a voice to history’s silent victims.” —The New York Times Book Review “Orhan’s Inheritance illuminates human nature while portraying a devastating time in history . . . A remarkable debut novel that exhibits an impressive grasp of history as well as narrative intensity and vivid prose.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “A remarkable debut from an important new voice. It tells us things we thought we knew and shows us we had no idea. Beautiful and terrible and, finally, indelible.” —Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Queen of America