Armaveni
A Graphic Novel of the Armenian Genocide
Nadine Takvorian’s devastating and important graphic memoir Armaveni unpacks the generational traumas left by the Armenian genocide.
A teenager in 2001, Nadine is desperate to learn about her family’s time in the Ottoman Empire. Her parents are resistant to her demands, knowing the emotional burdens of these tales; still, they relent. They reveal that Nadine’s grandmother, Armaveni, was sixteen in 1915; she lived and sang happily in Marsovan. Though the city was half Armenian, those citizens had no true protection from the racism, rapaciousness, and violence of Turkish forces, though. To save her life, Armaveni was married off to the miller—a man deemed “essential,” forced to convert, and thus spared from the firing squads.
Nadine is haunted by her grandmother’s story and by the stories of other relatives marched off into the desert to starve and be forgotten. She persuades her parents to let her and her brother join a church trip to Armenia, with a side trip to Turkey—where, she is warned, it is still not safe to speak Armenian. She visits the sites of her cultural past as well as memorials to the genocide. Turkey itself both feels like home and doesn’t: it is lovely and warm, but “underneath you never know what someone thinks.” A sense of latent, perpetual danger suffuses Nadine’s experiences there. Her mind roiling with new knowledge, she returns home with refreshed cultural pride—and the newfound courage to stand up to a duplicitous teacher’s erasure and lies.
Brilliant images of a phoenix run throughout Armaveni and Nadine’s tales. A symbol of Armenian resilience and memory, it rests in a nest of “flowers and honey and cinnamon” and connects Nadine to her ancestral past. Elsewhere, the illustrations, in their shades of violet, vivify unforgettable scenes as of a church burning with women and children inside and the righteous flashing of Nadine’s eyes.
Memorializing the Armenian genocide alongside its searing tale of family wounds and survival, Armaveni is an exemplary graphic memoir.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
