Published in 2008, Me as Her Again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter by Nancy Agabian is the first [*] memoir written by a bisexual Armenian-American.
It was a finalist for a LAMDA literary award in the LGBT nonfiction category and shortlisted for a William Saroyan International Prize.
Agabian is the author of Princess Freak, a mixed genre collection of poems, short prose, and performance texts on young women’s sexuality and rage.
Her essays have been published in Ararat, The Brooklyn Rail, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, Kweli Journal, Women Studies Quarterly and Forgotten Bread: First Generation Armenian American Writers. Her fiction has appeared in The Hye-Phen Magazine and the Queering Yerevan anthology Queered: What’s To Be Done With Xcentric Art.
“I could have kept these histories, these personal stories, some might say selfish, self-centered stories to myself, solid in the knowledge that I had grown. But then I would be betraying another inheritance from my mother and grandmother; to speak the truth, not merely for the satisfaction of one’s self, but because it is the right thing to do.”
Me As Her Again, Nancy Agabian
Agabian’s memoir braids her narrative across both geography and time: her childhood in Massachusetts (Walpole), her life as a twenty-something in Los Angeles (Hollywood), and then recreating the stories of the Genocide, attempting to understand the stories her mother and grandmother shared with her.
The memoir is provocative (“I looked into the back row and announced in a stage voice, ‘This performance is called The Crochet Penis’) and complex (“Now she was annoying me. Everything that I thought was Armenian was suddenly Assyrian. Who is she to tell me?“).
When you research Queer Armenian literature, you will see Agabian’s name many times. She is an organizer, working across the U.S. and in Yerevan to help queer women write, speak up, and organize.
If available, please consider buying a copy at Abril Books. This book may also be available for purchase through the Queer Armenian Library’s shop at Bookshop.org. If you purchase a copy through Bookshop.org we will receive a commission.
Otherwise, please use Indiebound’s bookstore finder to find a copy at your closest independent bookstore.
ISBN: 978-1879960794. Published by Aunt Lute Books.
