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Book Review: Stories My Father Never Finished Telling Me

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  • Book Review: Stories My Father Never Finished Telling Me

    Kirkus Reviews (Print)
    February 1, 2015, Sunday


    Stories My Father Never Finished Telling Me

    Living with the Armenian legacy of loss and silence

    NONFICTION; Memoir



    Kalajian's (co-author: They Had No Voice: My Fight for Alabama's
    Forgotten Children, 2013, etc.) "ethno-memoir" is an elegiac
    reflection on growing up under the specter of the trials a family, and
    a whole people, experienced. Kalajian, in his third book, touches upon
    both his upbringing as an American boy and his being a bearer of a
    tortured Armenian past.

    The remembrances are deeply personal meditations on what it was like
    to live distanced from a world with which he had very little direct
    contact even as it powerfully shaped his life. Readers will sense the
    author's background as an investigative journalist as he tries to
    wrestle the facts of his history from his family's laconic resistance
    to speak openly about it. Kalajian's inscrutable father is a near
    mystery; only slowly, in fits and starts, does Kalajian learn about
    his adventurous but hardship-ridden life. He had no idea his father
    went to China or Borneo and no idea his father grew up in Greece or
    that he was raised in an orphanage. Even his more voluble mother's
    tales were carefully edited and studiously redacted. While not
    intended as a work of rigorous scholarship, Kalajian's book contains
    considerable discussion about the history of Armenians, and much is
    revealed about their experience with Turkish persecution and global
    neglect. However, this is largely an autobiographical tale. "I am not
    a historian, and this is not a book of facts and dates and sober
    analysis," he says. "This is a story told by a man born in midair
    whose only hope for a good night's sleep is to close his fingers
    around the frayed cord of history and tug with all his might." His
    polished, sometimes even poetic prose evokes a sense of curiosity and
    lament. In response to his family's silence-and to the silence of a
    whole people still shellshocked by their grim treatment-Kalajian has
    become a professional storyteller and an excellent one at that. An
    affecting account of an American man attempting to uncover his
    Armenian heritage and history.

    Publication Date: 2014-05-31
    Publisher: 8220 Press
    Stage: Indie
    ISBN: 978-0-615-97902-1
    Price: $16.95
    Author: Kalajian, Douglas

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