A monolithic national identity covering all ethnic groups in republican Turkey was enforced after 1923 and the Armenian collective suffering of the past was buried in silence.
Recent political developments breached the wall of silence. The events of 1915 and the plight of the Armenian survivors in Turkey, be them Christian, Islamized, or hidden, have been espoused and fictionalized in literature produced in Turkey. The stories that Turkish writers unearth and the daring memoirs of Turkish citizens with an Armenian ancestor, as well as obscured reference to these same stories and events in Turkish-Armenian literature, have unveiled the full picture of survival, with an everlasting memory of the lost ones, but also of forced conversional, of nurturing the “enemy” in the bosom, and of dehumanization and sexual torture of men and women.
In the foreword to this second, revised edition, Professor Richard G. Hovannisian writes about the author, literary scholar Rubina Peroomian: “Her work is far from being descriptive alone, as it attempts to analyze—to grasp—the depths of emotion, the trauma, and the complex pysche of the survivor and orphan generations. She enters the pages of her writing and often acts as a direct observer, commentator, and critic.”
