Autobiographies

Books

Autobiographies

Passage to Ararat

by Michael J. Arlen, Clark Blaise (Introduction) National Book Award Winner, 1976 Grade Level: Ninth Grade to Adult Passage to Ararat echoes current headlines as Arlen examines the 1915 “ethnic cleansing” [genocide] of the Armenian race by the Turks.  In…

Survivor Accounts

The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey

Dawn Anahid MacKeen Growing up, Dawn MacKeen heard from her mother how her grandfather Stepan miraculously escaped from the Turks during the Armenian genocide of 1915, when more than one million people—half the Armenian population—were killed. In The Hundred-Year Walk, MacKeen

Deli Sarkis: The Scars He Carried

Ellen Sarkisian Chestnut Deli Sarkis: The Scars He Carried tells the story of Deli Sarkis, an Armenian who witnessed first-hand the atrocities of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923. The book is a tale of two journeys: the author’s journey to discover…

Goodbye, Antoura

A memoir by Karnig Panian When World War I began, Karnig Panian was only five years old, living among his fellow Armenians in the Anatolian village of Gurin. Four years later, American aid workers found him at an orphanage in…

Our Cross

by M. Salpi A collection of autobiographical short stories from survivors of the 1915 Genocide of the Armenians, Our Cross was written by Aram Sahakian under the pen name M. Salpi. Sahakian, a medical officer in the Turkish army during…

Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide

by Lorna Touryan Miller, Donald Eugene Grade Level: Eleventh Grade to Adult Through interviews with a hundred elderly Armenians, Donald and Lorna Miller give the “forgotten genocide” the hearing it deserves.Combining a compelling oral history with a trenchant analysis of…

To the Desert: Pages from My Diary

by Vahram Dadrian trans. Agop Hacikyan; ed. and intro. Ara Sarafian Grade Level: Eleventh Grade to Adult To the Desert: Pages from My Diary, is a somewhat unusual narrative written by a child survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Vahram relates…

Historical Fiction

New Recommendation! The Honey Jar

Joan Schoettler Grade Level: 4th-7th grade In 1920, eight-year-old Bedros fled Armenia with his young sisters, grandmother, and uncle to escape the Turkish soldiers invading their town. But in the confusion, Bedros lost sight of the adults and was left…