Category: Books

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Go ahead, destroy this race.

“I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose history is ended, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, whose literature is unread, whose music is unheard, whose prayers are no longer uttered.

Go ahead, destroy this race. Let us say that it is again 1915. There is war in the world. Destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them from their homes into the desert. Let them have neither bread nor water. Burn their houses and their churches. See if they will not live again. See if they will not laugh again. See if the race will not live again when two of them meet in a beer parlor, twenty years after, and laugh, and speak in their tongue. Go ahead, see if you can do anything about it. See if you can stop them from mocking the big ideas of the world, you sons of bitches, a couple of Armenians talking in the world, go ahead and try to destroy them.”

by William Saroyan

from Inhale & Exhale (1936)

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Remembering Our Ancestors: Maps and Genealogy Resources for Armenian-Americans | The New York Public Library

As an Armenian-American keenly aware of the devotion to lost homeland of my ethnic compatriots, I’ve always been on the lookout for Armenians among the researchers from many large ethnic groups who have found their way to the Map Division. April 24 is the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, and one way to honor those who were not able to find refuge is to learn all we can about them and celebrate our link to them.

Petition for Naturalization of Arshile Gorky, indicating his place of birth, courtesy of U.S. National Archives, via Ancestry Library Edition

Click link below to read full article…

Source: Remembering Our Ancestors: Maps and Genealogy Resources for Armenian-Americans | The New York Public Library

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Orhan’s Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian

Los Angeles — Skylight Books (1818 N. Vermont Ave.) welcomes Aline Ohanesian on Tuesday, April 7 at 7:30pm

In her extraordinary debut, Aline Ohanesian has created two remarkable characters–a young man ignorant of his family’s and his country’s past, and an old woman haunted by the toll the past has taken on her life.

When Orhan’s brilliant and eccentric grandfather Kemal–a man 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’s will raises more questions than it answers. He has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away, an aging woman in an Armenian retirement home in Los Angeles. Her existence and secrecy about her past only deepen the mystery of why Orhan’s grandfather willed his home in Turkey to an unknown woman rather than to his own son or grandson. Left with only Kemal’s ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There he will not only unearth the story that eighty-seven-year-old Seda so closely guards but discover that Seda’s past now threatens to unravel his future. Her story, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which his family has been built. Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan’s Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that can haunt a family for generations.

Aline Ohanesian’s great-grandmother was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Her history was the kernel for the story that Ohanesian tells in her first novel, Orhan’s Inheritance. Ohanesian was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction and “Glimmer Train”‘s Short Story Award for New Writers. Born in Northridge, California, she lives and writes in San Juan Capistrano, California, with her husband and two young sons. Her website is www.alineohanesian.com.

The event takes place on April 7 at 7:30pm.

Please visit link to the event:
http://www.skylightbooks.com/event/aline-ohanesian-reads-her-debut-novel-orhans-inheritance

Skylight Books is located at 1818 N. Vermont in Los Feliz (cross is Franklin), 323-660-1175. www.skylightbooks.com