We Are All Armenian, Aram Mrjoian
We Are All Armenian, Aram Mrjoian
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We Are All Armenian
Voices from the Diaspora

Author: Aram Mrjoian

Narrator: MW Cartozian Wilson

Unabridged: 9 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/05/2023


Synopsis

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.

About Aram Mrjoian

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Սամուէլ on June 24, 2023

I admit that I entered this anthology with a bit of skepticism, perhaps after having read so many seemingly repetitive Armenian Weekly articles about individuals' insecurities vis-à-vis their Armenianness and self-perceived lack of competence in the Armenian language. HOWEVER, I was very pleasantly......more

Goodreads review by Sananne on February 23, 2024

This essay anthology is so beautiful, rich and diverse. Although it only features North-American voices from the diaspora, the last essay really brings home the message of "it doesn't matter where or how you experience Armenianness, it is all Armenianness". I really love that the anthology ends with......more

Goodreads review by George on November 28, 2023

I come from a family of those who survived the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and eventually arrived in the United States. Paternal and maternal families found ways to escape. So far, I am like many of the contributors in this anthology. My family, to survive in the new country and also in an effort to f......more

Goodreads review by Anxious_Millenial on June 24, 2024

As a native Armenian born as part of the diaspora, I felt seen for the first time reading this book collection of essays from real people in the community. I actually chose the audiobook version because of my ADHD. My ONLY complaint is I wish that the audiobook narrator didn't have such a heavy Amer......more