Journey to the Past

I haven't read many memoirs, but I thoroughly enjoyed Passage to Ararat! This is the kind of memoir that made me feel like the author was the main character of a fictional piece that I was getting to see go through trials, morph their perspective, and learn to empathize with a father he spent most of his life feeling distance and estranged from. I read this book with a literature class at my university which gave me the opportunity to hear other peoples' opinions and views on the book. Overall, the history that this memoir includes alongside the very personal as well as physical journey of its author was the most interesting part to me. A lot of the information regarding the realities of the Armenian Genocide and the general history of the strange "brotherhood" between the Turkish and the Armenian people was foreign to me, and made me think about why I wasn't educated on the events of these peoples' history as extensively as, say, the Holocaust. My class also discussed four intertwining storylines which involved the author's connection to his homeland, his ancestors, his late father, and an Armenian man he met and interacted with for most of the novel. It was a very well-written story concerning the confrontation of denial and the collective history and bond of a unique people group. I enjoyed learning about this man's personal account as an Armenian American man.



One of my favorite quotes from Passage to Ararat:

"...there was something quite grandly human in the Armenian experience, with its misfortunes, and pride, and survivorship, and hope..."

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