Black Dog of Fate

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Summary: Black Dog of Fate
Review: The "Black Dog of Fate" is the perfect example of the superb writing of Peter Balakian. Peter Balakian uncovers a piece of lost history which should have already been recovered. He uncovers his childhood, which started as a normal American, with exceptions of his Armenian customs and festivities. Writing about himself, his young adulthood years led to writings and poems. In his work he figured out the horrors the country of Armenia has faced. Although becoming the first country to accept Christainity, Armenia has never had a true bright spot in their future. While most people in the world has heard about the holocaust and extermination of Jews, hardly anyone has heard of the Armenian Genocide, the first genocide of the 20th century, where over 1.5 million Armenians perished in the hands of the Turks. Balakian soon wrote about the death matches and massive killing sprees. With such a large amount of deaths, Balakian asked how this event could be overlooked. WWI and the Final Solutions of Jews attacked as a distraction, but the main problem was the Turks success in erasing this tragic event. Peter Balakian describes his determination of not letting this piece of history disappear.

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Summary: A Universal Story of Self-Discovery
Review: The beauty of "Black Dog of Fate" is that anyone who has the good fortune of picking up the book will immediately relate to the author's childhood and sentiments. Balakian's writing is poignant and eloquent, as he enocovers the tragic history of his family and the entire Armenian people who faced Genocide at the hands of the Turkish government.

Even through his journey of probing his Armenian roots, Balakian remains the all-American kid. His evolution from a child to adult and the experiences he has along the way, are brilliantly familiar. I often found myself touched by his language and style, which capture the inquisitiveness, happiness and pain of coming of age.

However, the underlying theme is the complexity of discovering one's true identity, and the often piecemeal nature of this task. Balakian's discovery does not happen overnight, as we see glimpses of his family's painful secret even in his early years. His full appreciation comes at adulthood, when we see the beautiful blossoming of his self as an Armenian-American, or just a complete individual of any identity.

Balakian embodies the universal struggle to understand human nature and the spectrum of beauty and horror that it is capable of producing.

A definite must-read for everyone!!

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Summary: A Journey of Discovery and Truth; of joy, and tragedy.
Review: The excellence of this work is found in many different forms. It is a story of self-discovery, of coming to know the nuances and subtleties of one's ethnic heritage. It is a story of truth, both of the tragic history of the Armenian people, and of a particular immigrant Armenian family as well. Balakian weaves a wonderful and at times heart-wrenching tale of his sojourn, with his childhood in New Jersey, and his discovery of the terrible truths of the Armenian genocide. His descriptions of his early life experiences are delightful and clever, without being pretentious. We even get to sample some of his poetry! The only reason I did not give it a "5" was that it was not long enough! I wanted to read more.

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Summary: Armenians first, Jews yesterday, Kosovo today,---- tomorrow?
Review: The world's people need to be enlightened by the truth of the first twentieth cenutury genocide by the Turks who still deny these atrocities. Peter Balakian brings awareness and enlightenment to the confusion and misunderstanding of the Armenian genocide which has been a mystery to me, as well as others who have been brought up in similar Armenian households. Especially, with the Kosovo situation today, Peter Balakian must take this one step further and write a documentary for TV showing the similarities between the Armenian genocide, the Jewish holocost, and the Kosovo tragedy. I congratulate and thank Peter for acknowledging his Armenian heritage and clarifying some of the mysteries of our Armenian past which effects us all. Our parents, being the first generation post massacre trying to obliterate the past memories, brought us up as "Americans" but left us with a void of heritage and belonging. Peter Balakian revives the pride and understanding in being Armenian and helps us better understand the silence of our parents and the historical burden carried by our Armenian ancestors!

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Summary: riveting and devasting
Review: This book is about the Turkish slaughter of the Armenian Turks during World War I. It is also about an Armenian-American's search for his family's past, and his present identity as viewed through one of the most horrific events of world history, an event made even more unimaginable by the fact that it occurred during the twentieth century.

Mr. Balakian's prose overwhelms without being self-pitying or maudlin. I can still smell and taste of walnut and lemon in an Amenian-American household in the 1950's, juxtaposed with the life of a boy who is living under the cloud of the horror of what happened to his ancestor in Turkey in 1917, before he became conscious of what actually occurred.

This book left me reeling and depressed for days. It is a book that must be read.

David W. Lee [e-mail]

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Summary: History and Literature Beautifully Intertwined
Review: This book is beautifully written. It does a marvelous job of portraying the growing pains of a teenage boy in his all-too-normal clashes with his parents; this boy's clashes, however, also have to do with his family's Armenian background. As a child, Balakian took for granted or failed to notice many of the hints and signs that his family had a very different history from the other families around them. As an adult, he grows curious, investigates and discovers the tragic events in his family's past. The book does a beautiful job of weaving these two stories together.

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Summary: Should be read by everyone, Turks too!
Review: This book reminded me of Catch-22 in many ways: it started in a comedic vein, with amusing anecdotes of family life (I'm not Armenian, but I could relate), which made the horror-show that followed all the more ghastly. Also, as a teacher who taught in Turkey for three years, I remember many times hearing the same bits of propaganda from my students that Balakian accuses the Turkish government of. This book should be translated into Turkish so students there could learn what many people in the west already know, as well as learn more about a people, via a personal history, that once formed an integral part of their own society.

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Summary: beautiful memoir
Review: This is a beautifully written book-- a lyrical nostalgia for 1950s suburb life haunted by the invisible presence of an Armenian family's violent past. Balakian has worked magic with this mingling of personal and historical narrative. He does falter a bit in the last couple of chapters, getting a tad preachy when the narrative speaks perfectly well for itself, but that's forgivable.

Read it because it's a lovely memoir. Read it because it's a slice of history your social studies curriculum probably left out. Or just read it.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully told
Review: This is a beautifully written book-- a lyrical nostalgia for 1950s suburb life haunted by the invisible presence of an Armenian family's violent past. Balakian has worked magic with this mingling of personal and historical narrative. He does falter a bit in the last couple of chapters, getting a tad preachy when the narrative speaks perfectly well for itself, but that's forgivable.

Read it because it's a lovely memoir. Read it because it's a slice of history your social studies curriculum probably left out. Or just read it.

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Summary: As informative as a textbook, reads like a novel.
Review: This is a delicately written book about one of the worst crimes against humanity. It is still not commonly known that during the First World War, the Ottoman Turkish government put to death one and a half million Armenians on Turkish territory: one half of the world population of Armenians and eighty percent of the population of historic Armenia, then and now under Turkish rule. Nearly every Armenian family in the world included members lost to the Armenian Genocide as well as those who were witnesses. Balakian tells the story of his relatives during the Genocide, focusing on the story of his grandmother Nafina, who was a young woman at the time and showed considerable courage in confronting the Turkish government shortly thereafter. In the book's most potent chapter, he also tells the horrific story of her friend Aghavni. Balakian interweaves these tales of survival with dry anecdotes about his immediate family's life in American suburbia. He ends with the story of his own growth to awareness of his heritage and his decision to become active against the Turkish government's campaign of misinformation and repression within the American academy. Balakian describes this chillingly, and in life he has made some real progress in fighting it.

This book is an excellent introduction to the subject--in fact, in some senses it is almost too good, for the last word on this subject is a long way away. Balakian's talent as a writer is impressive: at its best, his prose is as hard and rich as polished ebony. He is not only a poet but a skilled memoirist and historian and has put together a compact, comprehensive educational package within an engaging story of family ties and political awakening. One of the more unique features of his story among Armenian memoirs is its Americanness: for Balakian, the analogy is not just with the Jewish Holocaust in the Second World War but with the Vietnam era, his generation's war, and "Black Dog of Fate" can also be read as a paradigmatic American story during the years in which many Americans realized their prosperity was built on the deaths of millions, in one context or another.

This is not an unqualified rave. The belletristic gloss of the book makes it a pleasure to read, but it is also apt to inspire some resentment among Armenians who might feel their tragedy is being turned into a poetic archetype. And for a book which is so painstakingly constructed, there are odd gaffes in a few sentences. Mainly, however, one hopes that the reader will take Balakian's voice as one which leads him or her to the rich, neglected literature of the Armenian tragedy and inspires future reflection and action.