AGOS Weekly Micheline Aharonian Marcom: “My grandmother is a citizen of the Ottoman Empire, ninety-nine years ago, the age of thirteen, his mother, his father and the whole family was killed. Relatives were either killed or sent to Der Zor. My grandmother lost their homes. “
Micheline Aharonian MARCOM
“We take over end up, though.”
Myuong Mi Kim
| Micheline Aharonian MarCom: In 1968, an American father and an Armenian Lebanese mother as a child comes into the world Micheline Aharonian Marcom, grew up in Los Angeles. Until the Civil War started in 1975, the summer holidays, spent his mother’s family lived in Beirut. A trilogy dealing with the Armenian Genocide, and in 2001 published his first book, ‘Three Apples Fell from Heaven’, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, among the best books of the year by the newspaper as shown. The second book in the series was released in 2004, including Pan American, has been awarded important prizes. Taught writing at various universities. Currently lives in Berkeley, California. |
My first novel ‘Three Apples Fell From Heaven’ [Three Apples fallen from the sky], in 1915 and 1917, with two neighboring Ottoman cities and hamlets Harpoot (now Elazig) passes. The stories told in the book, in part, at the beginning of the last century and four men came into the world, survivors of the Armenian Genocide with a sister of my grandmother’s life is based on Demirjian Anagül. My grandmother and her sisters, grandfather of the family of a Turkish partner hiding next two years, Der Zor of extending freed from death march. From there, go to Beirut to Aleppo, and finally settled fled. My mother was born and raised there.
I was born in the Middle East, but my father grew up in his hometown of Los Angeles. My mother, my family in Turkey about the history, especially my grandmother’s family how to save that other children from each other leave orphanages when placing his own children how to hold together that, on one hand, not to exceed number of sentences were bequeathed to me. Starting from these few sentences (‘ve done quite a bit of research and a considerable time after the break), I wrote my first novel. My goal is, in some ways, the story of my grandmother did learn better (my grandmother, I was nine years old, and another during the war, died during the Lebanese Civil War); but at the same time, some of the things I carry in me, I took over inheritance of grief and sadness as we understand better, I think I also had a goal. Every one of us, our families, and of course, we are members of the public, remains as a legacy of stories. The stories told to us, and even, I think, censored, is not mentioned, denied the story that you’re getting the inheritance. The untold story of a ghost, little hints, grief, and even anger are appearing out of nowhere as sources. Telling our story in an uncensored way, we know better ourselves, the better we understand and believe that we have liberated. In this sense, lies and Blinding If you are connecting us how real it really is liberating.
So much love being a writer of books and perhaps this is why. Books, time, space, and have the capacity to transcend borders as well as the reader, whoever and wherever they may be-of-consciousness, the consciousness of a book are also provided in the asset discovery. It is extremely beautiful, a radical possibility of affective. Every one of us, another in, albeit as a summary, it can be summed up as, in a sense when you read it because we’re going, we put ourselves in his place.
My grandmother is a citizen of the Ottoman Empire, ninety-nine years ago, the age of thirteen, his mother, his father and the whole family was killed. Relatives were either killed or sent to Der Zor. My grandmother lost their homes. Two years later, together with his brothers went into exile. Maybe you can revive it in your mind. Today, his grandson, I am writing to you from California. The so both myself, as well as to you: who is alive, lost their lives, the rights have been usurped, silenced minorities have stayed in, excluded, exiled the people and Anadolulu a young girl, Anagül to remember; to tell their stories; in fact, the author once said of Ralph Waldo “as described really ensure” that, it is our duty.
Truth does free us, just as blind us lies
Not to have seen it, yet inheriting it.
Kim Min-Myuong
My first novel, Three Apples Fell From Heaven, takes place in the adjacent Ottoman towns of Harpoot and Hamlet (now Elazig) in 1915 and 1917. That book is based, in part, on the life of my maternal grandmother, née Anaguil Demirdjian, who was born at the turn of the last century, and who, along with her four brothers and one sister, survived the Armenian Genocide. My grandmother and her siblings hidden with a Turkish family, my great-grandfather’s business partner, for two years, therebye evading the death marches to Der Zor, until they could escape, first to Aleppo, and finally to Beirut where they settled, and where my mother was born and raised.
I myself was born in the Middle East, but raised in Los Angeles, my father’s hometown. From my mother I inherited a handful of sentences about my family’s history in Turkey, mostly about how my grandmother had saved the family, kept the children together when others would have separated them and put them into Orphanages. From the few sentences I inherited I eventually (after Considerable research and time) I wrote my first novel-in some ways to know my grandmother’s story better (she died when I was just nine during another war: the Lebanese Civil War), and also, I think, to have a better understanding for some of the things which existed in me: the melancholy and sadness I had inherited. We, all of us, inherit stories from our families, and also, of course, from our nations. We inherit the ones told to us, and even, I think, the ones that are censored and untold, or denied. The untold stories show up like apparitions, ghosts, like small inklings, and even rages melancholies. I believe that in the telling of our stories without censorship we come to know and understand ourselves more fully, and, I think, we find a freedom: in that sense truth does free us, just as lies bind and blind us.
Perhaps this is why I love books so much, and why I am a writer, not only because books have the capacity to cross time and space and borders, but because they allow the reader’s consciousness, whomever he is and wherever he is, to be in the consciousness of a book’s: such a beautiful, radical act of pathos. It is in this way that each one of us can, however Briefly, come to know the other, for in some sense we become, hum while we read, we walk in feeling shoes.
Ninety-nine years ago my grandmother, citizen of the Ottoman Empire, a girl of thirteen, lost her parents and all of each extended family – they were either murdered or sent to the Der Zor; She lost her home; and two years later went into exile with her siblings. Perhaps you can imagine it. Today every granddaughter writes to you from California. I tell it to you as I tell it to myself: it is our duty to remember them, to tell their stories, to let the truth, as the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, be “truly told,”-of the living, the dead, the Disenfranchised, the silenced ones, the minorities,, the denied, the exiled, and of a young Armenian girl from Anatolia Anaguil named.
Micheline Aharonian Marcom