Rating: 
Summary: "AFTER LONG SILENCE"
Review: 'Speech after long silence; it is right...'-William Butler Yeats
I have had this line from Yeats' poem in my mind as I've been reflecting on the contents of this book by Peter Balakian written in 1997. (This book was rated one of the best books of 1997 by the LA Times, Publisher's weekly and Library Journal.) I've read about Armenian history as I made many acquaintances of Armenians in the Boston area where I lived. I've put off reading this book because I thought the information would not be new since I've read The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Balakian's 2003 book The Burning Tigris, and Bat Ye'Or's book Islam and Dhimmitude. However, I loved this book even though some of the same information is found in The Burning Tigris. This book is different however. The Burning Tigris is history, The Black Dog of Fate is personal history of great relevance for today. It's a memoir of not only Balakian's life, but also his family's life during his lifetime and their past before he was born. The book is divided into 6 sections. The first three are devoted to his grandmother, his mother, his father. The last 3 cover his gradual understanding of his ancestors' trials and tribulations, their ancient history. Armenia was the first nation to embrace christianity as their official religion in the third century. An editor of Josephus notes that an early church father and mystic, Moses Chorensis, wrote that a tribe of jews designated Bagratidae migrated to Armenia during the time of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar, the time of the destruction of Solomon's temple in 586 B.C. Although his family never talked about the genocide, he became curious by the very circumstances of his family. He never knew his grandfathers. He later comes to realize that his grandfathers suffered the common fate of many Armenian men during the Great War (WWI). The turkish gendarmes in charge of "protecting" the Armenians during their forced march routinely shot Armenian men in the back of the head killing them instantly. Other Armenian men attempted to disguise themselves as women to foil the Turks' bloody target practice. When his father suggested to him that he do a school report on Armenia, he chose to write about Turkey because he could not find any information about Armenia.
His fondest memories were of his grandmother telling him stories which began with the Armenian "djamangeen gar oo chagar", in English, there was and there wasn't. One of her stories was an Armenian parable about a poor woman and her black dog offering to God probably modeled after Christ's parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31. Her stories are similar to any immigrant to America from their old, peasant countries. Peter Balakian was a second generation American; his parents were adamant that their children live as Americans, yet their Armenian culture is distinctive and is not totally erased by embracing the American one. Many Americans should be able to relate to this in some way since nearly all of our ancestors were immigrants at some time.
Peter Balakian is an English Professor at Colgate University, his aunt at Columbia University, both of whom also write poetry. Being able to write about history and making it interesting is not an easy task; I was impressed by his writing in The Burning Tigris, he kept my attention the whole time. I highly recommend this book and I highly recommend this book for book clubs in that the subject matter is very relevant to today, Armenia's history instructive in so many ways.
'Speech after long silence; it is right...'. The Armenian genocide happened almost 100 years ago, his grandmother one of the survivors. He comes to realize that for her to have spoken openly about it was probably much to much painful for her. He finds out later from his aunts that following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, her psyche was set into a tailspin. She suffered a nervous breakdown. That act of terrorism too much like the violence that she lived through. Strangely, the Turkish government today cannot come to terms with the truth about events of 1915 and goes so far as to influence governments and Ivy League Universities by contradicting the massive documentary evidence that exists confirming the atrocities and claiming that there is another side of the story that needs to be told. However, there is not much to discuss when you see mounds of bodies, women and innocent children, with an armed man capped with a blood-red pillbox hat standing right by. Strange that they cannot speak the truth, one hundred years later.
Rating:
Summary: Devastating
Review: A true literary memoir, Balakian peppers his prose with poetry, legal documents, etc. etc. etc. A fascinating and heart wrenching look at one of the 20th Century's tragedies. At once intensely personal and heatedly political, it is a book which shows how important it is to learn about one's history, not just as an individual but also as a society.
Rating: 
Summary: Personal and Politcal
Review: After I finished this book, I remembered a quote I had read upon leaving the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. (writer unknown), "Many thoughts go through my mind, though I remain speechless." This is how I felt after I finished "Black Dog of Fate." The horrors of the Armenian genocide were introduced to me by reading this book, and Balakian made them personal. I felt like I knew his family, like I had adopted them as my own. I think Balakian intertwined the personal and political beautifully -- I love how he uses the English language! This book moved me, changed me, and educated me in many ways.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, a must read for all
Review: An excellent memoir. Balakian's poetic style of writing is absolutely pleasing to the reader. I found the chapter on the Genocide to be piercing to my heart; it left my soul soaring. His vivid descriptions of the 1915 events are powerful. It definitely deserves the great reviews it has received from various sources. I would recommend this book for everyone.
Rating:
Summary: a must read!
Review: Balakian has done an excellent job in describing and documenting the events of the genocide. He has expressed it in a manner that is understandable especially to a non-Armenian (or a totally Americanized Armenian) reader. The last chapters of the book are extremely important, since they point out the subtle, yet dangerous ways in which the government of Turkey is *currently* trying to hide the events of the 1915 genocide.
Rating:
Summary: As a first generation Arm-Am I identify with Balakian
Review: Balakian speaks for thousands of first generation Armenian-Americans. Like him I was raised in ignorance of what the Turkish-Armenians had endured to survive and go on with their lives. As I grew up I began asking my mother what had life been like for the Christian Armenian community in Moslem Turkey. She began relating stories of the precarious existence of Armenians surrounded by their brutal despisers who sporadically for set periods of time could rape, murder and pillage their Christian neighbors. A older friend of our family, found he had cancer. I went to his home and got him to reluctantly relate his family's tragic story of 1915. Out of a family of thirteen, only he and an older sister survived the horrible trek into the Syrian desert. Every Armenian family in Akron Ohio had suffered deaths and depradation at the hands of the Turks. Like Peter Balakian, I also became aware of my heritage and am proud of our people, their tenacity, courage, refusal to aposticize and regeneration. All this they have done quietly, humbly and with a lusty dedication to family and life.
Rating:
Summary: Discover Your Inner Armenian
Review: Before I go off preaching about what a great book this was and that all Armeanians or those wanting to know more about the genocide should read it, I want to take a moment to refer readers of it to Michael J. Arlen's Passage to Ararat. Both are strikingly similar in that they both follow the journies of men trying to discover what it really means to be Armenian. Okay! Now that that's done, I definitely want recommend this book. I'm not Armenian, but I am marrying one. Reading this book helped me to feel what it would be like to be one. It's hard to describe really... I still haven't come to terms with how such a terrible thing could happen--particularly what a short time ago it was. Reading Black Dog of Fate certainly helped me to understand how an Armenian might feel, knowing that his or her people had been persecuted in such barbaric ways. I also think that this book would be especially good for younger Armenians to read--because like me, they weren't present during the genocide. It could really help them to understand what struggles their relatives had to go through in order to survive, and ultimately, the survival of their family. Don't miss your chance to get this book! Buy it before it goes out-of-print! It's a bargain!
Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting
Review: Black Dog of Fate is an absolutely great book to read. Not only does is inform you of past history, but aslo retells the life of a yung boy growing up into a family who is too horrified of the genocide to ever mention it. It starts off pretty lame at the beginning, but once you get to around the early middle pages, youn won't be able to put it down.
Rating:
Summary: UNIVERSAL MEANING
Review: Black Dog of Fate is an extraordinary book: enormously skillful and revelatory as literature, downright potent as polemic. The consciousiness-changing part for me was seeing (smelling, tasting...) Balakian's processes of exploration, discovery and synthesis of meaning via mere images. Images, at the same time vistas for the individual psyche and universally comprehensible, are ground zero for both identity and communication. There is so much more one can say about Balakian's accomplishment...
Rating:
Summary: A CLASSIC MASTERPIECE!
Review: FROM: Black Dog of Fate is a classic masterpiece!... If you are Armenian, or if you know any Armenian people and would like to understand their past better, or if you simply are interested in the history of the Middle East in general or genocide in particular, then you will learn a lot from this book. Peter Balakian is a true Azad Adzvadzazeen!... "a free man of God" - and a poet of magnificent proportions. He writes like an artist, not a scholar! Nevertheless, he is a great scholar and researcher, otherwise he would never have been able to write this great book. This book reads like a novel. As soon as you begin to read it, you will not be able to put it down. Your eyes will be closing, and you'll say to yourself:"Just one more page; just one more chapter." ... It's that great! I read this book in three days, finding it to be one of the most captivating books I have ever read. It does for the Armenian people what ELENI (the book by Nicholas Gage) did for the Greek people. It helps the world to better understand their suffering at the hands of the Turks.
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