We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora
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.

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We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora
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.

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We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora

We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora

We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora
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We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora

We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781477326794
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Publication date: 03/14/2023
Pages: 224
Sales rank: 655,855
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Aram Mrjoian is an editor-at-large at the Chicago Review of Books, an associate fiction editor at Guernica, and a 2022 Creative Armenia-AGBU Fellow.

Table of Contents

  • Editor’s Note
  • Introduction
  • How Armenian Funeral Halva Helped My Family Find Home in America (Liana Aghajanian)
  • Hava Nagila (Naira Kuzmich)
  • “Where Are You From? No, Where Are You Really From?” (Sophia Armen)
  • An Inter/Racial Love History (Kohar Avakian)
  • Language Lessons (Nancy Kricorian)
  • A Good, Solid Name (Olivia Katrandjian)
  • My Armenia: Imagining and Seeing (Chris McCormick)
  • Inside the Walls: Reflections on Revolutionary Armenians (Nancy Agabian)
  • Going Home Again (Chris Bohjalian)
  • Lost and Found (Aline Ohanesian)
  • A Letter to My Great-Grandson (Raffi Joe Wartanian)
  • Open Wounds (Anna Gazmarian)
  • Բառէրը-the Words (J. P. Der Boghossian)
  • The Road to Belonging (Raffy Boudjikanian)
  • The Story of My Body (Hrag Vartanian)
  • Valley View: An Armenian Diasporic Account in Lieu of a Glendale Biennial Review (Mashinka Firunts Hakopian)
  • Perspectives on Artsakh from a Black Armenian Angeleno (Carene Rose Mekertichyan)
  • We Are All Armenian (Scout Tufankjian)
  • Acknowledgments
  • Reading List of Armenian Writers
  • Notes on the Contributors

What People are Saying About This

Patrick Nathan

Each of these extraordinary essays is a life altered by a century-old genocide, illuminating not only the recognizable aspects of political violence but its hidden, cruel subtleties—how it always lingers, but lingers differently. As heavy and dazzling as a geode.

Leila Emery

The greatest strength of We Are All Armenian is the diversity of its writers. The presence of multiracial Armenian, queer Armenian, and polyamorous Armenian voices alongside one another adds a bold richness that goes beyond simply being novel. Not only are these stories that many readers may have never heard before, but they also beautifully subvert preconceived notions about who and what constitutes the Armenian diaspora. The writers, who understand profoundly what it means to have one’s history erased or denied, thus ensure that other types of erasure are both confronted and avoided.

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