Black Dog of Fate An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past
The first-born son of his generation, Peter Balakian grew up in a close, extended family, sheltered by 1950s and ’60s New Jersey suburbia and immersed in an all-American boyhood defined by rock ‘n’ roll, adolescent pranks, and a passion for the New York Yankees that he shared with his beloved grandmother. But beneath this sunny world lay the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had experienced–the Turkish government’s extermination of more than a million Armenians in 1915, including many of Balakian’s relatives, in the century’s first genocide.
In elegant, moving prose, Black Dog of Fate charts Balakian’s growth and personal awakening to the facts of his family’s history and the horrifying aftermath of the Turkish government’s continued campaign to cover up one of the worst crimes ever committed against humanity. In unearthing the secrets of a family’s past and how they affect its present, Black Dog of Fate gives fresh meaning to the story of what it means to be an American.
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Who Speaks of the Armenians Now?
A very good, well written story of the author’s discovery of his own Armenian roots and the genocide of 1915 of which his grandmother was a survivor. It also is about one half of an autobiography, detailing the author’s upbringing in suburban New Jersey.
The first three parts of the book are subtitled Grandmother, Mother, Farther. I feel the book should have jumped into the Armenian part of the story much faster. A better course might have been to make the leap from Grandmother to the old country and then fill in the backstory of the author’s upbrining in New Jersey.
According to the dusk jacket, the author was born in 1951, as was I, so I can testify to the veracity of his account of those times.
Much of sections set in Turkey during the time of the Armenian genocide are given over the official documents about the event, as if the author were uncertain his own word would be enough to convince the audience. Given the Turkish government’s commitment to denial on this issue, I suppose that is understandable.
4 Stars “Black Dogof Fate” Is a Fuzzy Grey Beast at Best
Peter Balakian’s book, “Black Dog of Fate,” tries to be too many things
and sadly fails at many of them. In essence, it is an attempt to tell a
sort of Armenian-American story which I find not overly interesting or
compelling. I wish the author had done a bit more in-depth work to learn
about his people and their rich heritage before embarking to represent it
or explain it or share it with non-Armenians, for he has much more to absorb
and understand himself first. I find the Armenianness in this book to be
tentative, unengaged and unconvincing. Pity, since the author seems to
have a lot of passion in his pursuit of other aspects of his life such as
football, the Yankees, modern poetry, and exposing Turkish attempts to
buy (among others) Princeton professors to act as mouthpieces giving
legitimacy to their vile historical revisionism, practiced by the
“modern” Turkish state and its organs.
It seems to be all the rage these days to elevate personal histories and
family testimonials into the realm of fiction and novels. The “I” and “we”
and “us” occupy center stage and the reader is invited to enjoy the
intimacy that must surely be in place via this artifice. But is it realy?
Since in order to make this legitimate, the writer must distance himself,
at least initially, from all this old world exotica, and like the reader,
question their validity or relevance in present day North American
society. What are all these old world, old fashioned ghosts and traditions?,
is the first cry of writer and reader alike, only, ofcourse, to be followed
by a sharp bank turn where the writer steers the satisfied and in-place
reader towards the opposite viewpoint wherein *this* culture and *this*
lifestyle become suspect in light of some tentative spotting of cultural
wealth that has been traded in or abandoned in order to swim swiftly towards
materialistic, memory-free, self-redefining, “comfort” seeking and buying
mores.
In the Balakian tale, one encounters suburbia instead of substance,
worldly goods acquisition instead of deep roots that steady the soul,
immediate family and relatives running away from their true identities either
towards surrealism, the abstract and unemotional, or else towards medicine,
respectability and detachment. Young Balakian observes but never
understands “the grandmother” for she is shielded culturally from being
able to reach him by her very offsprings who can not and will not instill
the Armenian identity he will eventually seek but never quite find. Their
crime is self-denial and a march to the tune of America’s mixmaster
piper. “Be unlike your past and your future will be brighter,” seems to be
what America promises, at the very least. The intermediate generation listens
and adopts this credo and Peter is left to find out but never quite
understand just what cost his ancestors have paid to remain Armenian and
to preserve our culture before the final denials on New Jersey pateos while
enjoying, as if to serve sweet irony, full course Armenian meals and the
mixing aromas of delicacies from the old country every Sunday.
Peter is lost alright, but as the book sadly shows, he remains lost.
Paraphrasing or quoting Ambassador Morgenthau does not an Armenian genocide
expert make. Personal family testimonials of the Turkish atrocities does
not a genocide history make (For that, read Vahakn Dadrian’s “The History
of the Armenian Genocide” Berghahn Books, 1995). Episodic accounts can be
dismissed by the Turks as hear-say and as mere isolated incidents, leading
to more harm than good (for if better evidence existed, the arguement
goes, why would anyone resort to such flimsy fare?). For the story to have
worked, for the story to have *really* worked, as I would have liked it to,
Balakian’s life and lifestyle would have had to have changed
significantly and his child rearing practices would have had to reflect
it, and his relationship with his wife who, like him, is not leading a strongly
Armenian existence, would have had to have changed, solidifying his roots,
celebrating his new found identity, and nurturing the metamorphosis by
sustained community involvment and grass roots movement participation
which, alas, never appear on the pages of this book. How else to explain
the lack of a turning around of the tide of assimilation to which Balakian
is a grand personal witness, except that the transition has not occured?
The ship of Armenianness sails by Balakian. He is finally aware enough to
be able to identify the ship and wave it goodbye and write about it, but
not resolved enough to climb aboard. That is how the book fails and that is
how his story fails. This is a story of assimilation and loss with a bit of
mid stream self awareness thrown in. For a real story of an Armenian
finding his roots and letting them take root in his own life and future,
read Mark Arax’s book, “In my Father’s Name (Simon & Schuster, 1996),”
where the transition is real and the early youth of disaffection is
replaced by a profound adoption of our essence revealed in exquisite
frankness and power by Mark Arax. One can only hope that Balakian’s
partial reorientation towards our culture and traditions and essence will
somehow continue and that some day he will wish to live with a more meaningful
attachment to our cause and needs than merely as an able observer (not
withstanding his laudible actions as an April 24th — Armenian genocide
commemoration speaker and an exposer of Turkish infiltration in the US
academic arena by buying spokesmen turned professors who mascarade as
unbiased researchers). This criticism I direct to the predecessor of this
genre of American Armenian writing first and to Balakian second. I speak
here of “passage to Ararat” by Michael Arlen (Hungry Mind republication,
1996) where a disinterested soit-disant Armenian goes to Armenia in the
70’s and by the end of the short trip is somewhat more closely touched by
this strange people’s woes and dreams. Too little, too late, and always
detached, is all I can say to these meagre displays of ethnic or cultural
reorientation. Much more needs to be absorbed before the essence is
transmitted to future generations to take and behold.
However, I remain hopeful that future transformatory stories and ethnic
identity survival stories *will be* written which will show that the tide
of assimilation and cultural abandonment are not the only outcome of this
experiment of transplanting peoples and cultures to this continent we
proudly call our home.
5 Stars A GOOD BOOK
I just finished reading this book. It tells the story of a boy growing up in the 1950s who along with his Armenian grandmother who shared a love of the NY Yankees growing up in New Jersey. It also tells the trauma of the past telling the story about some of his family members killed by the Turkish government in 1915. It is well written and I loved the story. It’s a really good book if you want a good read. It was both happy and sad. It also brought back a lot of memories of a bygone era. I liked it a lot.
5 Stars Sad story, but a real one
The story of the author’s grandmother is the same as the story my grandmother told me. Yes, her entire family was killed by the Turks. As a small child, I attended the Armenain school where all of us would compare stories as to how our grandparents survived the death marches. It is a very nice story that tells about history, a history that is kept hidden for many political reasons. Until the world fully ackhowledges what happened to the Armenians, and punishes the Turks, many more genocides and attorcities will take place. After all, if the Turks can get away with the torture, killing, rapes, and genocide (while countries such as the United States let them get away with it), then other similar regimes will committ similar attorcities.
I storngly recommend this book.
4 Stars An Armenian undercurrent of a family’s past.
This is a nice personal interest read about a well to do Armenian family living in northern New Jersey. What makes it different is the undertone of a family tragedy suffered in faraway Armenia during 1915. During that time, the Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire sought to kill or dispossess 1.5 million Armenians of their lives and property. The author’s grandparents suffered enormously and their parents and siblings died through the most brutal methods. When the Balakian was growing up, there was always something under the surface of their family. The author’s parents did not educate how their family suffered during this time. When the author does a term paper on Turkey for his high school class and gets an A, his father is angered on the subject he selected.
The one thing that stands out in this memoir is that the Turks still deny they did anything wrong. A recent amendment in the U.S. Senate was defeated due to Turkish pressure to label this a genocide. This despite the fact that this happened over 90 years ago. Somehow the Turkish people and nation chooses to not assume guilt on one of the first mass murders in the world’s history.
The book gets off to a slow start with several chapters on Balakian’s grandmother. Some of the writings suggest mystical happenings like the black dog and blue lady. After that the author focuses in on his family and the tragedy of Armenia. One thing that I think the author got wrong is when the Young Turks assumed command of the Ottoman government. Two Sultans ruled from 1908 till 1920. They were figureheads to the Young Turk government. Other than that, an interesting read.
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