Published in 2007, Forgotten Bread: First Generation Armenian American Writers, edited by David Kherdian, is a notable anthology in that it includes a selection from Arlene Voski Avakian’s memoir Lion Woman’s Legacy. Avakian is a Lesbian Armenian-American writer. She is a pioneer not only in Queer Armenian literature, but Armenian literature as a whole. Nancy Agabian wrote the introductory essay to Avakian’s chapter, and she is herself a pioneer in both Queer Armenian and Armenian literature.
Too often, Queer Armenians face marginalization, or outright erasure, from mainstream Armenian-American literature. Kherdian’s inclusion of Avakian and Agabian is a welcome change.
In addition to a selection from Avakian’s memoir, Kherdian includes two of her poems.
Staying in the cottage at the end of the road
for a three week vacation,
we are called the “Yank girls”
by our neighbors
who offer tea and warm buttered soda bread.
I am as relaxed as I have ever been,
but I dream of Lesbians every night.
An Irish friend,
hearing the growing love for his country in our voices,
asks if we would live here.
Emphatic and decidedly negative
my response is too quick.Connections II, Arlene Voski Avakian
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ISBN: 978-1-59714-069-0. Published by Heyday Books.
