This is, for our family, a season of milestones and celebrations. On May 26th James and I marked our 25th wedding anniversary, and later in the week we hosted a celebratory Chinese banquet complete with Moutai (“the world’s #1 selling spirit”) and poems offered by our friends, ranging from recitations of Auden, Frost, Rukeyser, and Levertov to a limerick composed for the occasion. We also heard selections from Rosa Luxembourg’s prison letters and an eclectic list of world events from 1989 (for example, the TV show Seinfeld was launched and Beijing was put under martial law).
Our younger daughter, Djuna, will graduate from high school this week. Our elder daughter, Nona, will graduate from college two days later. And two days after that, I will be leaving for an Armenian Heritage Trip to Turkey. I have been referring to this as “Twenty Armenians on a Bus,” which a friend suggested would be a great title for a one-woman show. I thought it might make a good stand-up comedy routine. But I am also describing the voyage, primarily to non-Armenians who think of Turkey as the land of good food, fabulous bazaars and historic mosques, as a search for ghosts. The itinerary is planned around the participants, taking us to visit the cities and towns our grandparents fled during the Armenian Genocide.
As a final note, the official publication date for the paperback of ALL THE LIGHT THERE WAS by She Writes Press has been set for October 7, 2014. It’s already posted and available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and McNally Jackson. When I get back from Turkey in early July, I’m going to start the push to get the word out about the paperback, and to line up events for the fall and next year. I’ve come a long way since grade school when I dropped out of Girl Scouts because selling the cookies was a most mortifying experience.
Nancy Kricorian
P.S. For summer reading, I’d like to recommend two titles I recently read and loved: Nescio’s AMSTERDAM STORIES and THE COLLECTED STORIES OF LYDIA DAVIS.
June 10, 2014