Definition
Until the 11th century, Armenia was an independent nation in western Asia. From that time, Armenia was continuously colonized by Ottoman Turks, who ceded part of the country to Russia in the late 19th century. Divided between two warring empires (Russian and Ottoman) during World War I, Turkish Armenians were subject to genocidal massacres, the worst of which occurred in 1915. In the wake of the genocide, the Armenian diaspora brought 100,000 immigrants to the United States. Since then, the number of immigrants swelled to the point that there are now 750,000 Armenian Americans.
The ghost that haunts Armenian-American literature is the "ethnic inheritance of genocide," in which 1 million Armenians were killed by Turkish rulers between 1890 and 1915. The best known of these works is Michael Arlen's Passage to Ararat (1975), which recounts the author's attempts to fix the identity of his father (who disguised his Armenian roots) and therefore of himself. Winner of the National Book Award, Passage to Ararat describes Arlen's trip to the genocide memorial in present-day Armenia and an imagined dialogue with his dead father, with whom he makes his peace.The most celebrated of Armenian-American authors, is the playwright and novelist William Saroyan. Saroyan writes extensively on non-Armenian subjects, but he frequently returned to his ethnic roots, notably in his novel Rock Wagram (1951) and in three plays, An Armenian Trilogy, written in the last years of his life. In these works Saroyan focuses on the theme of family and ethnic identity.Other major Armenian novels are Peter Sourian's The Gate (1965) and Peter Najarian's Voyages (1971), both of which deal with the legacy of genocide. These novels invoke primarily a patrilineal world. The contrasting feminine perspective is captured in Carol Edgarian's Rise the Euphrates (1994).Among important contemporary Armenian-American poets are David Kherdian (The Nonny Poems, 1974) and Peter Balakian (Reply From Wilderness Island, 1988).
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