My Grandmother: An Armenian-Turkish Memoir

This was a brief but very affecting memoir written by a Turkish lawyer and activist about discovering her Grandmother's origins. It's only in recent years that the Armenian Genocide is coming to be recognized as the atrocity it was. Turkey has done it's best to erase this part of it's history. But as Fetihye Cetin and others like her come to learn about and embrace their heritage, that denial is slipping away.

This book is as much about Cetin's journey to process her grandmother's story as it is about that story itself. As such, it jumps around a little in an attempt to lay all the groundwork for the story. This mostly worked, though it was occasionally jarring to jump between Cetin's present and her grandmother's childhood. By the end it all comes together, and it makes sense why she explains the things she does.

Cetin doesn't linger over the horrors her grandmother experienced on the death march to Aleppo, but she doesn't shy away from them either. Everything is presented matter-of-factly. That starkness makes it worse than any flowery language could, and part of that is just that there are so many atrocities to document that Cetin doesn't have time to linger over them.

I'm glad I read this and that these stories are being told. Especially by Turkish people who have the most to overcome, in terms of education, in order to accept this part of their history. The book ends with Cetin meeting her relatives in America, descended from her grandmother's parents and siblings who survive. It's bittersweet, because the reunion happens after her grandmother's death, but it allows for the beginnings of healing, for this family and for the two peoples.