Chris Bohjalian

[MosJan]

http://www.chrisbohjalian.com/images/chris-bio.jpg

 

 

BIOGRAPHY

Chris Bohjalian is the author of fifteen books, including the New York Times bestsellers, The Night Strangers, Secrets of Eden, Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, Before You Know Kindness, The Law of Similars, and Midwives.

 

His new novel, The Sandcastle Girls, will be published on July 17. It is an historical love story set in the First World War. You can read more about it here.

 

Secrets of Eden, his 2010 novel, premiered as a Lifetime Television movie on February 4, 2012. It starred John Stamos and Anna Gunn.

 

Chris won the New England Society Book Award (for The Night Strangers) in 2012, as well as the New England Book Award in 2002 and the Anahid Literary Award in 2000. His novel, Midwives, was a number one New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah's Book Club, a Publishers Weekly "Best Book," and a New England Booksellers Association Discovery pick. His work has been translated into over 25 languages and three times become movies ("Secrets of Eden," "Midwives," and "Past the Bleachers"). You can see some of the international covers on this web site.

 

He has written for a wide variety of magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and has been a Sunday columnist for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since 1992. Chris graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.

 

You can learn more about him here on the Q and A, as well as on Facebook . And, if you like, follow him on twitter and goodreads as well.

 

 

[MosJan]

 

ԱՄՆ Կոնգրեսում տեղի է ունեցել Քրիս Բողջալյանի Հայոց ցեղասպանության մասին գրքի շնորհանդեսը

http://media.pn.am/media/issue/118/079/photo/118079.jpg 2 օգոստոսի 2012 - 14:37 AMTPanARMENIAN.Net - ԱՄՆ Կոնգրեսում տեղի է ունեցել վերջերս հրատարակված Քրիս Բողջալյանի «Ավազե ամրոցի աղջիկները» գրքի շնորհանդեսը, որը պատմում է Հայոց ցեղասպանության մասին: Ինչպես հայտնում է Ամերիկայի Հայ Դատի հանձնախումբը (ANCA), միջոցառումը կազմակերպել էր ANCA-ն Հայոց ցեղասպանության մասին բանաձևի կողմնակիցներ կոնգրեսականներ Ռոբերտ Դոլդի ու Ադամ Շիֆի հետ համատեղ:

 

«Այսօրվա միջոցառումը մեկ անգամ ևս գալիս է փաստելու Քրիս Բողջալյանի մեծ տաղանդը որպես գրողի, որը սովորեցնում է, լուսավորում է և ոգևորում է իր ընթերցողին,-նշել է ANCA նախագահ Քեն Խաչիկյանը:-Նրա վեպն արծարծում է Հայոց ցեղասպանության բազում չլուծված բարոյական ու մարդկային ասպեկտները: Մենք հուսով ենք, որ այդ ստեղծագործության միջոցով կշարունակենք մեր աշխատանքը մեր կողմը գրավելու համար Ամերիկային ու վերջ դնելով դեռևս անպատիժ մնացող այդ ոճրագործության հարցում թուրքական ժխտողականությանը»:

 

Կոնգրեսական Ադամ Շիֆն իր հերթին որակել է Բողջալյանի գիրքը որպես «մի վեպ, որն ունի ներքին ուժ և հիանալի է շարադրում պատմության էությունը՝ ստիպելով մեզ խորասուզվել նրանց տառապանքների մեջ, որոնք անհետացան ու նրանց, ով պայքարեց քաղաքակրթության այն մութ տարիներին… Կարծում եմ, որ դա Հայոց ցեղասպանության մասին փաստերի ուսումնասիրման կարևոր մաս է կազմում ոչ միայն Կոնգրեսի, այլ նաև հայ ժողովրդի համար»:

 

«Ավազե ամրոցի աղջիկները» գիրքը հիացական արձագանքներ է ստացել ավելի քան տասնայկ ամերիկյան պարբերականներում, այդ թվում Washington Post, USA Today, the Boston Globe, the Associated Press, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly և People Magazine. Հուլիսի 23-ին գիրքը հայտարարվեց շաբաթվա գիրք Oprah.com կայքում և այժմ 7-րդն է New York Times-ի բեսթսելերների թվում: Իսկ շնորհանդեսից մեկ օր առաջ The Washington Post-ը գիրքը հայտարարեց ԱՄՆ մայրաքաղաքի չորրորդ բեսթսելերը:

 

 

[Yervant1]

THE BOOK TELLING ABOUT THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE PRESENTED IN THE US CONGRESS

 

http://www.yerkirmedia.am/?act=news&lan=en&id=8826

15:26 . 02/08

 

The known American writer Bohjalian described his last morning

in Yerevan, when he caught a clear glimpse of Mount Ararat as he

waited to board his flight home. "There I was standing, at Gate A5

waiting for my flight, and I started weeping... I was weeping for

my ancestors; I was weeping for the gift of this mountain; and, I

was weeping because I knew in my heart that The Sandcastle Girls is

the most important book that I was ever going to write; and, I was

grateful beyond words, that I had been given that gift".

 

Armenian writer Chris Bohjalyan presented his 15th novel written on

the Armenian Genocide topic with such a confidence and warmth during

the presentation with the participation of numerous lawmakers in the

US Congress.

 

During the meeting held at the initiative of the Armenian National

Committee of America and a number of congressmen many words of

appreciation were heard. According to the author himself, his life

journey inspired him to write the book, and gave moving testament of

his visits to the lands of his Armenian ancestors, to current day

Armenia, and Anjar, Lebanon, the home of many who fought to defend

the villages of Musa Dagh during the Genocide.

 

Rep. Schiff explained that Bohjalian's novel, "which has been so

wonderfully reviewed, has a power of its own, to tell the story in

very human terms, to bring us all into the living rooms of those

who were lost and those who struggled through those dark times in

the history of civilization. . . I think it is a vital part in the

education of not only the Congress, but the Armenian people about

the facts of the Armenian Genocide."

 

Rep. Pallone told attendees that "all of you being here and the

author's efforts constantly bring to our attention the need for

recognition of the Armenian Genocide".

 

To recall, Bohjalyan's this book is still in the centre of attention of

a number of American authoritative periodicals, particularly Washington

Post, The US Today, Boston Globe. It is now the 7th in the list of

best-sellers. On July 23, the well known broadcaster Oprah Winfrey

declared the book a must-read book of the week.

[Yervant1]

REVIEW: THE SANDCASTLE GIRLS

 

The Nation (Thailand)

July 30, 2012 Monday

 

The Sandcastle Girls

By Chris Bohjalian

Published by Doubleday

 

It takes a talented novelist to combine fully ripened characters, an

engrossing storyline, exquisite prose and set it against a horrific

historical backdrop - in this case, the Armenian genocide - and

completely enchant readers.

 

The prolific and captivating Chris Bohjalian has done it all - again -

with his 15th book, "The Sandcastle Girls".

 

Readers will recognise the author from his best-selling "Midwives",

which caught Oprah Winfrey's attention in 1998. This time, it's 1915

and, again, his protagonist is a feisty woman, Elizabeth Endicott,

a 21-year-old graduate of Mount Holyoke who shatters stereotypes

by travelling to Syria to deliver food and aid to refugees of the

genocide.

 

And, again, Bohjalian shifts his novel back and forth in time to

simultaneously tell the story of Laura Petrosian, an Armenian-American

writer living in New York. It never feels clunky or tough to follow.

 

Instead, it's seamless and keeps the reader flowing evenly through

the story.

 

It's worth noting that even though Bohjalian is a man, his ability

to successfully inhabit the female mind and accurately depict his

characters' inner lives is amazing.

 

"The Sandcastle Girls", while perhaps not the "beachy" read its

title implies, is a fascinating journey through time and history. It

also educates readers about a little-known, but significant period in

history - "How do a million and a half people die with nobody knowing,"

his author-character writes. "You kill them in the middle of nowhere."

 

REVIEWED BY KIM CURTIS, ASSOCIATED PRESS

[Yervant1]

'SANDCASTLE GIRLS' INVADES BEST-SELLER LISTS NATIONWIDE; UK EDITION RELEASED

 

ASBAREZ

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

 

Cover of the UK edition of the "The Sandcastle Girls" NEW YORK-Chris

Bohjalian's The Sandcastle Girls continued to dominate many regional

and national best-seller lists on the second week of its release in the

U.S., while the book's UK edition hit the shelves in Europe on Aug. 2.

 

In the Aug. 5 print edition of the New York Times (Book Review, p.

26), the novel is anchored at number 7 on the nation's preeminent

best-seller list.

 

The Sandcastle Girls was number 3 on its second week on the New

England Indie Bestseller List (for the week ended July 29). The list

is compiled based on reporting from the independent booksellers of

the New England Independent Booksellers Association and IndieBound.

 

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that the novel was

the fourth best-selling book in the nation's capital.

 

The novel, which has sold tens of thousands of copies nationwide

within the first two weeks of its release, also figured prominently

on best-seller lists of individual bookstores. It was number one,

for example, on Harvard Bookstore's July 30 best-seller list.

 

UK edition The UK edition of The Sandcastle Girls, released on Aug. 2,

was published by Simon and Schuster with a different front and back

cover (see photo). On the back cover, the following passage from

novel is highlighted: "How do a million and a half people die with

nobody knowing? You kill them in the middle of nowhere."

 

For more information on the UK edition, click here.

 

http://books.simonandschuster.co.uk/Sandcastle-Girls/Chris-Bohjalian/9781471110702

[Yervant1]

Salisbury Post

Aug 12 2012

 

Bohjalian's 'Sandcastle Girls' a novel of depth, importance

 

`The Sandcastle Girls,' by Chris Bohjalian. Doubleday. 2012. 320 pp. $25.95.

 

By Deirdre Parker Smith

 

SALISBURY - Perhaps it's the mean-spirited times we live in, this

period of anger that made `Sandcastle Girls' so poignant. It tells a

haunting story of hatred and genocide, wrapped in a story of enduring

love and survival.

 

Based on the 1915-16 massacre of Armenians by the Turks in World War

I, the book was something Bohjalian was driven to write. He is

Armenian - as are many whose last names end in -ian, and he has had

tremendous support from Armenians throughout the writing process and

book tour.

 

Passion comes through clearly in `Sandcastle Girls,' with Bohjalian's

carefully chosen words, his flesh-and-blood characters and his vivid

descriptions. There are scenes of horror, but Bohjalian doesn't use

those scenes as clubs - rather as glimpses of nightmares too awful to

be true.

 

No one is safe from the genocide - not professors, doctors, lawyers,

not men, women or even children. The men were simply slaughtered, but

the women and children were driven through the desert with no food or

water. Many died on the way. Many were raped and murdered - the

children, too. A few survived, some haunted for the rest of their

lives by horrors, some too haunted to face the rest of their lives.

 

The novel, though, will leave you caring deeply for the characters

and for the Armenians who died two decades before the slaughter of the

Jews in the Holocaust.

 

The book is powerful, excellently written and gripping. Bohjalian has

done well with historical fiction, especially his moving story in

`Skeletons at the Feast' about the Polish in World War II. He can take

a subject that is deeply frightening and make it palatable for

readers.

 

The narrator of the book is an American novelist - a woman - who

calls the event `The Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About,' a sort

of glib way to describe it. For most, it's the slaughter you never

heard of, in a part of the world that ceased to exist in 1922. There

is no more Armenia. It was swallowed up by the USSR. Aleppo, the site

of the massive deaths of Armenian women and children, is again the

site of brutal fighting in Syria - death seems to feel at home in that

city.

 

Today, piles of bones are housed in museums dedicated to the Armenian

slaughter. Piles of bones, only the thick black hair remaining, marked

many sites in the desert where the death marches took place in the

years of 1915-16. Bohjalian describes them through the eyes of Helmut,

a German engineer pressed into service as a soldier, yet a man who

wants to document the genocide: `He stares more closely out the window

at a massive pile of tree limbs - a messy pyramid - no more than

thirty of forty meters from the tracks. The branches have been

bleached white by the sun on one half of the mound, but are blackened

on the other side, as if someone started to burn them but the fire

never quite spread and eventually burned itself out. He is wondering

briefly ... when he realizes they are not tree limbs at all and his

gaze grows transfixed.

 

`In the end, it was the skulls that gave it away.'

 

The narrator's grandparents, Elizabeth and Armen, are the focus of

the story. Elizabeth is a Mount Holyoke graduate with a real desire to

do some good in the world. She travels with her father to Aleppo, to

try to bring aid to the suffering. They will be joined by a missionary

and two doctors. Elizabeth will help in the hospital that houses

refugees.

 

Her father is starchy and traditional, and we see little of him in

the book. Armen is another engineer - - an Armenian, whose wife and

daughter died in the march across the desert. When he sees Elizabeth,

he starts to feel again, inspired by her determination and beauty.

 

What starts to seem hopeful can't last long in this city of death.

Armen feels a strong need for vengeance, especially when his German

friends are sent away and punished for documenting the genocide. He

goes to Egypt to fight, to kill for those he loved most and lost.

 

Elizabeth and the aid entourage make a dangerous trip to the desert

camp of Der-el-Zor, to be met with frustration, futility and real

danger.

 

Elizabeth has taken in an Armenian woman whose husband trained in

London to be a doctor, and Hatoun, an orphan who watched her mother

and sisters as they are beheaded. The widow and the orphan form a

strong bond and come to represent the future for the Armenian people,

now scattered throughout the globe.

 

The plot takes many twists and turns, all building back to the

present, to the woman novelist in Boston who represents Bohjalian in

the book.

 

`Sandcastle Girls' is hopeless and hopeful, guaranteed to make

readers identify with the Armenians, to want to read more about their

history. It is moving and sweet at times, brutal at others. It is a

story of death and the triumph of life and quite possibly the best

thing Bohjalian has written.

 

You owe it to him and the Armenians to read this book.

 

For a reading group guide and more background on the book and the

history, visit Bohjalian's website,

http://www.chrisbohjalian.com/the_sandcastle_girls.

 

http://www.salisburypost.com/Entertainment/081212-book-sandcastle-girls-qcd

[Yervant1]

Chris Bohjalian Mines His Armenian Roots to Map the Ways a Massacre of the Past Influences the Present

 

 

 

Amy Driscoll, Miami, Florida, U.S.A.

(Editor, “Miami Herald”)

 

Chris Bohjalian has written a compelling new novel that is part love story, part history lesson. And the history is his own.

 

In The Sandcastle Girls, Bohjalian offers an eye-opening tale of longing and discovery set during an event in history that is still not widely known: the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Armenians near the beginning of World War I.

 

 

 

Bohjalian, a critically acclaimed writer with Armenian grandparents, is staking out serious political territory in this novel. The deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in Syria, a mass killing that began in 1915, remains an emotionally and politically charged topic almost 100 years later. The term “genocide” — which Bohjalian uses to describe the deaths in an author’s note at the end of his book — has been rejected by Turkey because the government insists there is no evidence of a systematic extermination of a people. Even in the United States, where a strong Armenian community lives, a 2007 effort by congressional lawmakers to officially condemn the genocide failed after pressure from the Bush administration over Turkey’s role as a key U.S. ally.

 

For Bohjalian, there is no debate. Genocide is the right word, and his novel is his argument. But even though the descriptions of the brutality are devastating — Armenians were executed by soldiers, killed by neighbours, marched into the desert to die — the book isn’t a lecture. Instead, it’s a bittersweet reflection on hope even in the darkest circumstances.

 

We see the mass killings through the eyes of a young woman from Boston who arrives in Aleppo, Syria, in 1915, armed only with a few Armenian words and the determination to help deliver food and medical aid to the refugees. During her work with the Boston-based Friends of Armenia, she meets an Armenian engineer who has lost his wife and child. As the refugees are marched into the city, walking skeletons with barely a flicker of hope to keep them alive, two people from different worlds — the wealthy American, Elizabeth, and the shell-shocked engineer, Armen — begin to fall in love. But Armen decides he must join the fight with the British, so the would-be lovers are parted, at least for now.

 

 

When the novel switches to present day, we begin to see the genocide with a more distant perspective. A novelist named Laura Petrosian, living in suburban New York, starts digging into her own Armenian roots after an odd call from an old roommate who says she saw a photo of Laura’s grandmother in a newspaper. But the photo turns out to be someone else — a woman with Laura’s last name. As Laura tries to figure out who the woman is, she begins to unearth parts of her grandparents’ past that had been hidden for decades.

 

The story, alternating between Elizabeth in Aleppo and Laura in New York, does a remarkable job of showing readers the epic scale of what Bohjalian calls the “Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About.” Elizabeth’s view is at ground level during the roundup of Armenians: flies settling on half-dead bodies, columns of shuffling refugees forced into the desert, naked women with open sores long past the point of modesty and orphans struggling to survive with skinny limbs and enormous eyes.

 

Laura’s perspective comes through the survivors, refugees in the United States that include her grandparents with their hookah pipes, plush oriental carpets and leather-bound books in a language she couldn’t read, all housed in a living room she calls the Ottoman Annex. Through her, we feel the remnants of sadness, the “subterranean currents of loss” that know no geographical borders.

 

“If you are not Armenian, you probably know little about the deportations and the massacres: the death of a million and a half civilians. Meds Yeghern. The Great Catastrophe. It’s not taught much in school, and it’s not the sort of thing most of us read before going to bed,” Bohjalian writes, explaining in Laura’s voice.

 

Survivors of genocide feel ties to the past, he notes — a responsibility, even — that others without such a loaded history might simply shrug off. As the 100th anniversary of the slaughter approaches on April 24, 2015, he reminds us that “history does matter. There is a line between the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Serbs and Rwandans. There are obviously more but, really, how much genocide can one sentence handle? You get the point.”

 

We do. Bohjalian’s book is about the ways the past informs the present, about the pain but also the richness of heritage. If his goal is to educate us, make us see what has been almost left behind in the dust of history, he succeeds. And after reading this book, we aren’t likely to forget.

 

 

 

Source http://www.miamiherald.com

[Yervant1]

BOHJALIAN: FORREST GUMP GOES TO BEIRUT

Posted by Chris Bohjalian

 

http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/12/17/bohjalian-forrest-gump-goes-to-beirut/

December 17, 2012

 

We all have a little Forrest Gump in us. A bit of Leonard Zelig.

 

We've all had those moments when, suddenly, we are not merely witnesses

to an instant fraught with meaning, but we are participants in the

scene. We see ourselves both in the minute and with a cinematic

distance: Camera pulls back wide to reveal the majesty of the

spectacle, the sheer grandeur. And there, much to our surprise,

we see ourselves. We are at once in the moment, and an observer of it.

 

Two other students had already finished the book by the time I arrived

and wanted to discuss the ending with me with all the passion of

readers in Los Angeles or Milwaukee or Watertown.

 

I had one of those experiences when I was in Beirut in December. I

was in Lebanon as a guest of Hamazkayin and the Vahe Setian Publishing

House. I had spent a week visiting universities and schools, and now I

was in the Catholicosate in Antelias, meeting with His Holiness Aram I,

before he and a pair of scholars were going to discuss my most recent

novel, The Sandcastle Girls, in front of a packed house of roughly 300

people. After the two of us had talked for 45 minutes in his office,

we were summoned to Gulbenkian Hall, and here is where I went from

Armenian-American novelist to Zelig or Gump. I started to walk toward

the hall, but His Holiness put his hand on my shoulder and guided me

into the line of Reverent Fathers beside him. Fourteen men in black

cassocks and ceremonial vestments and...me. And thus, I walked into

Gulbenkian beside Aram I, in a formal procession of Armenian priests.

 

It wasn't the most terrifying moment of my professional life, but it

was up there. It was also, however, among the most moving.

 

The reality is that my visit to the Lebanese-Armenian community-my

second in 2012-was rich in memories like that.

 

There was my sobering conversation with the principal of one of the

Armenian high schools where I spoke. I asked him how the students

who had arrived from the cataclysm that has engulfed Aleppo were doing.

 

"They are accustomed to studying physics and chemistry in Arabic,"

he answered. "We teach those subjects here in French, so that has

been a struggle for them." I told him I had meant, how are they doing

emotionally? How are they coping with the trauma of upheaval and civil

war? He nodded gravely and said, "The ones who have both of their

parents with them are doing better than those whose fathers are still

in Aleppo, or whose mothers and fathers are both still in Aleppo."

 

There was my visit to the Levon and Sofia Hagopian Armenian

College-another high school, actually-in Bourj Hammoud. Friends of

mine in the United States had told me that even though the Armenian

students in Beirut might speak English, it was unlikely they would

understand the nuances of my presentation. Not true. The very first

question? A 16-year-old girl asked me, "Has writing this novel been

healing for you personally? Emotionally?" Two other students had

already finished the book by the time I arrived and wanted to discuss

the ending with me with all the passion of readers in Los Angeles or

Milwaukee or Watertown.

 

There was my afternoon in Anjar with the Lebanese Armenian Heritage

Club from the American University of Beirut (AUB). I had spoken at

AUB on a Friday night and was planning on making the second pilgrimage

of my life to Anjar on Sunday. Franz Werfel's The Forty Days of Musa

Dagh is among my very favorite novels, and so I wanted to return to

the village where the descendants of the Musa Dagh resistance now live.

 

(For those unfamiliar with the story, in July 1915, roughly 4,000

Armenians from the 6 villages on the mountain refused to be resettled,

knowing that "resettlement" was a euphemism for "extermination." From

atop Musa Dagh they held off the Turkish army for 53 days, before they

were rescued by a part of the French fleet, which saw their red cross

distress flag dangling off the Mediterranean Sea side of the cliff.)

Three of the AUB students offered to join me, including Razmig

Boyadjian, the great-grandson of one of the martyrs of the mountain.

 

He showed me his great-grandfather's name on a replica of the canister

that once held the man's ashes. Meanwhile, moments before I spoke to

some of the citizens of Anjar, we heard shelling, as Syrian opposition

forces made a foray into the Bekaa Valley, trying-and failing-to

steal Lebanese Army weapons.

 

And orchestrating my week was Hagop Havatian of Hamazkayin, arguably

the hardest-working man in Beirut. Thanks to him, I was also able

to bring the story of The Sandcastle Girls and the realities of

the Armenian Genocide onto Arabic television and Arabic newspapers,

reminding the country of why the Armenian minority today is such an

important cultural and economic part of modern Lebanon.

 

The culmination of the trip, of course, was my visit to the cathedral

and the Catholicosate in Antelias. The reality is that as a novelist,

I meet a lot of extraordinary people. Most novelists do. But my

audience with Aram I and the presentation in Gulbenkian Hall was,

for me personally, a night for the ages.

 

I am not easily awed, but I was nervous. There are a variety of reasons

for this, some grounded in the man's profoundly important stature

in the church, and others in the chasm-like gaps in my own religious

training. Although my Armenian grandparents went to an Armenian church,

my parents usually attended Episcopal churches in the New York City

suburbs. Today I live next door (literally, right next door) to a

Baptist church in Vermont, and have gone there happily for a quarter

century. Nevertheless, my religious training has a long history

of eccentricity. Exhibit A? Most of my training for confirmation

when I was a 12-year-old at Trinity Episcopal Church in Stamford,

Conn., revolved around Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's rock opera,

"Jesus Christ Superstar." To this day, I still know an embarrassing

amount of the libretto.

 

In any case, the idea that I was going to meet His Holiness certainly

got my attention when I received the invitation back in September. I

learned key phrases in Armenian and I drove my friend Khatchig

Mouradian, the editor of this newspaper, a little crazy with my

obsessive-compulsive insistence on practicing precisely how much I

should bow when I met Aram I. And I asked Hagop Havatian to share

with me which of His Holiness's books I should read prior to our

meeting. I did considerably more homework than before I had been

confirmed three and a half decades earlier.

 

And yet, in hindsight, none of it was necessary. I never had to impress

anyone because, pure and simple, everyone was so supportive of my

visit. Everyone was appreciative of my attempt with The Sandcastle

Girls to bring the story of the Armenian Genocide to readers who could

not find Aleppo or Der-el-Zor-or even the Armenian nation-on a map. I

remember sitting in Gulbenkian Hall, almost overwhelmed with gratitude,

as Arda Ekmekji of Haigazian University was discussing where two of

my favorite characters, Nevart and Hatoun, fit into the story and

what their journeys in 1915 mean to all of us today.

 

Was this, too, a Forrest Gump-esque moment? Not at all. I had never

in my life felt more like I belonged.

[Yervant1]

Bohjalian: Shining a Light on the Shadow of Denial

By Chris Bohjalian

 

http://www.armenianweekly.com/2013/05/13/bohjalian-shining-a-light-on-the-shadow-of-denial/

May 13, 2013

 

 

The Armenian Weekly April 2013 Magazine

 

One night in November 2009, I heard Gerda Weissmann Klein speak in

Austin, Texas, at the Hillel chapter at the University of Texas. Gerda

is not only one of the most charismatic women I've ever met, she is

also an immensely gifted writer and speaker. She is also a Holocaust

survivor. Her 1957 memoir, All but My Life, chronicles her harrowing

ordeal in labor camps and death marches during World War II. Cecile

Fournier, the concentration camp survivor in my 2008 novel, Skeletons

at the Feast, owes much to her and to her story. Gerda is, pure and

simple, one of the wisest and most inspirational people I know.

 

Chris Bohjalian (Photo by Tom Vartabedian)

During the question and answer period of her speech that night three

and a half years ago, someone asked Gerda, `What do you say to

Holocaust deniers?'

 

She shrugged and said, `I really don't have to say much. I simply tell

them to ask Germany. Germany doesn't deny it.'

 

I recalled that exchange often this past year. The Sandcastle Girls,

my novel of the Armenian Genocide, was published in North America last

summer, and the reality is that outside of the diaspora community,

most of the United States and Canada knows next to nothing of this

part of our story. If you trawl through the thousands of posts on my

Facebook page or on Twitter, for example, you will see hundreds of

readers of the novel remarking that:

 

1) They knew nothing of the Armenian Genocide; and

 

2) They could not understand how they could have grown to adulthood in

places such as Indianapolis or Seattle or Jacksonville and not heard a

single word about the death of 1.5 million people.

 

Sometimes these readers told me they were aghast. Sometimes they told

me they were ashamed. And very often they asked me why: Why did no one

teach them this part of world history? Why did their teachers skip

over the 20th century's first genocide?

 

And the answer, pure and simple, is denial.

 

Imagine if I had answered my readers who wanted to learn more about

the Armenian Genocide by saying, `Ask Turkey. They'll tell you all

about it. They don't deny it.' But, of course, Turkey does deny it - as,

alas, do many of Turkey's allies. Now, these readers were not

disputing the veracity of the Armenian Genocide. They were not

questioning the history in my novel. My point is simply this: There is

a direct connection between the reality that so few Americans know of

the Armenian Genocide and the Turkish government's nearly century-long

effort to sweep into the shadows the crimes of its World War I

leaders.

 

As anyone who reads this paper knows, the Turkish government's tactics

have varied, ranging from denial to discreditation. They have, over

the years, blamed others, and they have blamed the Armenians

themselves. They have lied. They have bullied any historian or

diplomat or citizen or journalist or filmmaker who's dared to try and

set the record straight.

 

Now, in all fairness, there might be a small reasonableness trickling

slowly into Turkish policy on this issue. Earlier this year, on the

anniversary of Hrant Dink's assassination, the editor of this paper

gave a speech in Turkey - in Turkish - about justice for the genocide. You

can now read Agos, the Armenian newspaper in Ankara, while flying on

Turkish Airlines.

 

Nevertheless, it is a far cry from these baby steps and Ankara

following Berlin's lead anytime soon and building - to use the name of

the poignant and powerful Holocaust monument near the Brandenburg

Gate - a Memorial to the Murdered Armenians of the Ottoman Empire.

 

And the reality remains here in the United States that we as Armenians

actually have to struggle to get our story into the curriculums of far

 

too many school districts. We often have to create the curriculums

ourselves.

 

How appalling is this issue? My own daughter went to a rigorous high

school just outside of Boston, no more than 10 or 15 minutes from the

Armenian community in Watertown and the Armenian Library and Museum of

America. I saw the school had an elective course on the history of the

Ottoman Empire. When I ran into a student who had taken the semester

long class, I asked, `How much time was devoted to the Armenian

Genocide?' He looked at me, perplexed. He had no idea what I was

talking about. `I guess we never got to it because the course only

went as far as the end of the First World War.'

 

Oh.

 

Consequently, this past year I wound up as far more of an activist

than I ever expected I'd be about...anything. The reality is that

activist artists - or at least activist novelists - sometimes seem more

likely to embarrass themselves than affect social change. (Exhibit A?

Norman Mailer's campaign for mayor of New York.) But with every one of

those posts on my Facebook wall, as one reader after another asked me

how it was possible that they had never heard of the Armenian

Genocide, I found myself growing unexpectedly, uncharacteristically

angry. Make no mistake, I wasn't angry with Turkish citizens or

Turkish-Americans. But I was furious with a government policy that has

allowed a nation to, in essence, get away with murder - to build a

modern, western state and a civilized reputation on the bones of my

ancestors. And I found myself energized at every appearance in ways I

never had been before, whether I was speaking at a little library in

central Vermont with exactly zero Armenian-Americans in attendance or

on Capitol Hill, under the auspices of the Armenian National Committee

of America.

 

So, will more Americans know our story two years from now, when the

centennial of the start of the slaughter arrives? Darned right they

will. We will see to it.

 

 

 

Chris Bohjalian's novel of the Armenian Genocide, The Sandcastle

Girls, was published in paperback in April by Vintage Books.

[Yervant1]

THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY AFTER ALL

 

The Boston Globe, MA

May 31 2013

 

By Chris Bohjalian | MAY 31, 2013

 

HERE'S THE setup: A Coca-Cola bottle falls from a low-flying airplane

over an undeveloped corner of Africa. How undeveloped? The local

tribesman who finds it - as well as the rest of the villagers -

have no idea what it is and presume it's a gift from the gods.

 

Unfortunately, the empty bottle, with its myriad uses, unleashes

almost everyone's baser instincts.

 

I am referring to a 1984 movie called "The Gods Must Be Crazy,"

a comedy that much of the world loved and I loathed. Seriously. I

nearly walked out. I was even a little offended by what I perceived

as its Orientalism: Its Western condescension toward a culture that's

less developed.

 

So, why am I citing a nearly three-decade old movie that I detested?

 

Because I learned last month that the gods indeed might be crazy.

 

I was traveling with companions through Turkey's easternmost provinces,

a part of the world that is very different from cosmopolitan Istanbul

or such popular Turkish tourist destinations as Ephesus and Nemrut. The

regions are largely Kurdish, but as recently as 98 years ago they were

a mixture of Kurds, Turks, Assyrians, and Armenians. It is a part of

Turkey that many Armenians (including me) refer to as Historic Armenia.

 

While driving from Van to Diyarbakir, we detoured to a small Kurdish

village near Bitlis to see the ruins of an old Armenian church. What

remains is now a barn. As we were leaving, one of village elders pulled

aside my friend, Khatchig Mouradian, who speaks Turkish, and said

he had a relic the Armenians had left behind when they'd moved away,

and he wanted to know how valuable it was. He was hoping that Khatchig

could translate for him the mysterious Armenian writing on the bottom.

 

Khatchig could indeed read it. But so could I. So could have most

any third or fourth grader in any elementary school in Boston -

because it wasn't Armenian. It was English.

 

The relic was a run-of-the-mill porcelain plate from the 1960s. It

was a Currier and Ives sort of print of a horse carriage approaching

a post office. The wording on the bottom? "Royal Tudor Ware.

 

Staffordshire, England." I found this very plate - or one just like

it - going for a few dollars on eBay. I think anyone who brought the

plate to the "Antiques Roadshow'~R would have been laughed off the set.

 

It wasn't valuable. It wasn't a relic. And it sure as heck wasn't

Armenian. Trust me: The Armenian alphabet looks as much like the

Latin alphabet as a Picasso looks like a Monet. We're talking apples

and oranges.

 

But it was clear that the elder and the community members who crowded

around Khatchig as he translated the few words on the bottom revered

this plate. This was - forgive me - their Coca-Cola bottle. Sure, it

wasn't a gift from the gods, but in the eyes of this village, it was

an item of totemic importance that might have serious commercial value.

 

Now, it would be easy to focus on the reality that there are parts

of this globe that can't distinguish between a piece of mass-produced

1960s porcelain and a relic. But that's not newsworthy. That's a bad

movie from 1984. Moreover, this village had cars and electricity and

at least one dude with rock 'n' roll as the ringtone on his cellphone.

 

Here, however, is what fascinated me - what made this comedy in reality

a tragedy. The Armenians of the village didn't just "move away." At

least most of them didn't. Most of them, in all likelihood, were

among the 1.5 million Armenians systematically annihilated during

the Armenian Genocide that began in 1915. Three out of every four

Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were killed, sometimes by their own

Kurdish or Turkish neighbors.

 

I have no idea how that plate wound up in that village. For all I

know, it fell from a plane like a Coke bottle and managed somehow

not to shatter. Obviously it never belonged to the Armenians.

 

But even if the Kurds had shown us an actual plate from 1915, it

would not have been worth dying for. It would not have been worth

killing for.

 

The real value of that Staffordshire dinner plate from the 1960s? A

symbol of the ignorance and misunderstanding that can drive a wedge

between people who, once upon a time, might have managed to live

together in peace.

 

Chris Bohjalian is the author of 16 books. His new novel, "The Light

in the Ruins," comes out on July 9.

 

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/05/30/the-gods-might-crazy-after-all/CHbIPFNF1iyy7ouyTkP3kN/story.html