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Peter Balakian Biography

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“Since there was no picture of the old country in our house and since I didn't have one etched in my mind, the old country came to mean my grandmother. Whatever it was, she was. Whatever she was, it was.”

Family Armenian Genocide Black Dog Of Fate

Book:Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

Source: Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

“My grandmother’s hands floated like wings of bone in the dark, then they were birds, then small disks of light and then bones again, and then it was dawn.”

Loss Family Black Dog Of Fate

Book:Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

Source: Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

“I came to realize that my grandmother’s stories were part of time and not part of time, part of place and not part of place, part of the stuff that is stored in the mind’s honeycomb.”

Stories Family Folklore Black Dog Of Fate

Book:Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

Source: Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

“I realized that in order to touch the woman behind the grandmother I knew, the one who never spoke in a direct way about her past, I had to bring the pain of the past into the landscape of the present.”

Family Armenian Genocide Black Dog Of Fate

Book:Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

Source: Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

“I realized that she was my beloved witness, and I the receiver of her story. When I was a boy, she had showered me with love; now as a man, I could return that love.”

Family Black Dog Of Fate

Book:Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

Source: Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

“I had been privy to some of her intense sensory images, to her telescopic memory, to Genocide flashbacks. This was how she told me about her past. I think it was the only way she knew to speak to me about something she wanted to say, but couldn't say in any other language to a young boy, her eldest grandson.”

Family Armenian Genocide Black Dog Of Fate

Book:Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

Source: Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

“Had I been a witness to a memory of hers so terrible that it could only be said to me, an eleven-year-old, half delirious with fever, lying in bed between darkness and light? My grandmother had spoken so emphatically that day, in clipped, deliberate speech, as if to say, 'This is a moment to listen.”

Family Armenian Genocide Black Dog Of Fate

Book:Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

Source: Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past