Editorials and Profiles



Pieces of Happy Ever After: Book Review  & Author Interview

When author Irene Zutell moved from the bustle, hustle and color of New York City to the quiet suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, needless to say it took some getting used to.

“I find the valley strange,” admits the author, “there are things I’m not used to. Like - the first thing I noticed when I moved out here was you never really see people outside. Which is Bizarre. People in New York are always outside in front of their yards.”

Zutell, who grew up in New York, moved to the valley practically the day after she got married. In her 13 years of living in Woodland Hills, she has made some great friends but still comes across some strange and surreal behaviors. Some of these tid bits have made an appearance into her recent title, Pieces of Happily Ever After.

A journalist turned author, Zutell found the inspiration and subject matter for her recent book when a neighbor of hers was suddenly all over the media news outlets.
“Do you remember that whole thing with Danny and Vera Moder some time ago? Well, her husband, Danny Moder, left her Julia Roberts. It was a whole scandal. What I found fascinating was how many people felt that the wife shouldn’t have let her husband work with Julia Roberts. It's work! Why wouldn’t she? They were married and she wouldn’t have to worry,” states Zutell.
The story in the novel runs along the same lines. “I thought it was fascinating that this woman was thrust into the spotlight. And now has to start over again.” In fact the novel begins with Alice as she tries to barricade herself inside her house with her 5-year-old daughter; trying to maintain a certain sense of privacy while the paparazzi is just outside the door. 

We find her already come undone as she recounts the story of how her husband had left her for a high profile celebrity. It seems that everything is crumbling around our heroine all at the same time. The sky has truly fallen.
 
We follow Alice as she struggles to keep some composure for her daughter who is obsessed with all sorts of fairy tales -- a quirk included from the authors’ own life. And for some reason, Alice holds on to the notion that her marriage and her husband have just taken a break. That her husband, Alex, will come back and everything will be perfect just like it was: a new Happily Ever After for All…But that’s not the case.

Pieces of Happily Ever After is essentially a story about overcoming betrayal. What is supposed to be a private process is now splashed all over the media outlets.

Everything has a warped perception when celebrity and pedestrian/real people cross paths. Everything is also seen by the public at large. What people don’t get to see is the struggle the other half endures after the media moves on to the next new big story. This is the side of the story Zutell tells in her new novel. 

Here we have an ex-wife and a mother trying to keep things together no matter how frayed the strands have become. Trying to accept her new life and bring in positive reinforcements. One of which is an ex-porn star, who has become a notch in our main characters support system.
Zutell also incorporates some of her surreal Valley experience into the story as well.
“For instance, we had a house right above ours, that were making porn movies in. So that became a part of the book. My daughter who was just obsessed with fairy tales at the time would be outside playing and she’s hear these noises, and she was convinced that is was a princess trapped in a castle. So I incorporated that and a lot of other things in the book, ” shares the author. 

With her light prose to soften the heavy moods of the novel, Zutell’s story moves quickly and fluidly so the reader can get to good parts sooner.



Dead Air 

ENCNO, CA – The rain clouds were parting just as a crowd was forming at the foyer of the Barnes & Nobles on Saturday Dec. 12th. Just as you enter the front doors- and before you’re are bombarded by the Christmas gift ideas- author Linda Reid asks “do you like mysteries?” catching you before you have a chance to pass her by.

Stacks of her title Dead Air surrounded her as she talked to customers about the book while signing copies bought by friends, family and interested parties. The book was also co-written by Deborah Shlian, author of the international best selling and award winning title Rabbit in the Moon
“We met and worked together at UCLA in the student services department,” said Reid, “our experiences both in student services and research provided us with the inspiration to write this exciting book.” 
The book follows Sammy Green: an investigative reporter, talk show host and student at an ivy league university as she tries to find out what’s behind all these murders occurring at her school. She uncovers a conspiracy that could involved a number of likely suspect, such as a religious fundamentalist leader, a pharmaceutical company that’s engaged in a public private partnership with the University. That have may have a hidden agenda in mind. As well as staff and faculty at the University, that may not be as honest as they should be in an institution of higher education and ivory tower.

Both Reid and Shlian wrote the book in a course of a year working out the plot together over the phone while living on opposite ends of the country. “Each of us would get on the phone and assigned different chapters or sections to each other. We would write separately and then send via email our drafts to each other and the other would edit so that we would have one voice for Sammy Green and our cast of characters,” explained Reid. 

Reid also discussed how inspiration was pulled from both authors, which helped shape the character, and content of the story. Not only are the two authors physicians, Reid also has a background in talk radio and has also worked on television as a medical features reporter CBS station in Washington while Shlian has written a number of thrillers, such as Wednesday’s Child.

Both Reid and Shlian have already written the sequel to Dead Air and anticipate its release in April of 2011. Devil Winds continues following Sammy Green as she comes to LA working for a radio station. She ends up in a web of mystery and intrigue. 
“We’re hoping for an on going series. We’re working on the third book, just in the process of plotting it, so a lot of phone calls.”
Reid lives in Los Angeles and is the Director of student health center at Cal State Northridge.



The Secret Bookstore

 STUDIO CITY, CA –Not too far and not too wide is a Portrait of a Bookstore. While the size of this bookstore is no bigger than a walk-in closet, every inch, nook, corner and cranny has been taken up by the very best literary titles and antiquities.

Originally, Portrait of a Bookstore first opened its doors in Toluca Lake. But for the past 23 year the bookstore has resided next door to a popular café, which ensures a good deal of foot traffic, this secret little bookstore is sure to capture anyone that walks by its open doors.

“It would be yea or nay the moment they walked, in so we couldn’t afford to do it half way. It was all or nothing,” states Julie Von Zerneck.
In 1985 the Von Zerneck family decided to start a family business. When it was time to decide what their business should be the only thing they could agree on was the fact they were all passionate about books. The family flew to Chicago to attend a seminar at the American Booksellers Association to get more information about owning and running a bookstore. 

“We came away with three words drummed in our heads: Location, Location, Location,” recalls Julie Von Zerneck. In fact Portrait of the Bookstore is tucked inside Aroma Café, owned by Mark Gunsky. “With all its rooms, chandeliers and gardens filled with geranium and red umbrellas it’s our best location yet.” Indeed the bookstore has air of whimsy.
The Family Von Zerneck decided early on that the bookstore should feel like their living room. Everyone that entered would be greeted and treated like a guest in their home. They’ve filled every inch of the bookstore with current literary titles, great antique books from England and gifts from France.

Since then the family- run bookstore has expanded its family to include some extraordinaire staff members such Aida Chaldranyan, who came to the position as Store manager by way of Craig’s list. “The criteria for the job was that the applicant had to be a veracious reader,” said Chaldranyan.

Then there is Lucia Silva, the book buyer, who also is selects the worthy titles that line the limited shelf space. Silva also does the summer and winter review for NPR.There are some popular current titles along side unknown gems waiting to be discovered, making the experience at Portrait of a Bookstore that much more exciting. It also helps that the staff has read most of the books they carry, ensuring anyone who is looking for a good book will be certain to find one here.
 
Which is why it is only natural that Portrait of a Bookstore have a book group. Facilitated by Donna DeLacy, the idea of the book group was apart of DeLacy’s pitch when she was being interviewed for a position. “It’s just a passion I found early on,” said DeLacy. Before coming to Portrait of a Bookstore, DeLacy has blazed a trail of book groups throughout the country: from New York to Alabama to San Francisco and now, here in Studio City. There is a loose structure to DeLcay’s book groups. There are no leaders or experts that runs the discussions. Instead everyone is free to jump in with a comment, concern or question regarding the book they’ve just read.
“I think as the years have gone by the biggest problem is choosing the book. Not every book you read is a discussable book, in the way we discuss. Because if there’s not enough controversy, is got to strike a nerve. Or a book that leaves you with ambiguity,” said Delacy. The book group has been going strong for 10 years now.
In all the years the bookstore has been open, aside from having a great staff Portrait of a Bookstore would not be able to exist without its community of loyal customers.
“Our customers, friends really, are unsurpassed. They have kept us open through the LA riots, earth quakes, fires, 9/11, the recession, Our friends, our customers, that come from all over the world, have come in knowing that if they didn’t come in we would have to close up,” states Julie Von Zerneck.
And so in the past twenty years what first started as a family venture has grown to be a place where great writing and literature is more than appreciated, its really loved.
“All we want to do is pass the written word around. Keep open so that we can help tell the story.”
Portrait of a Bookstore has a sister store in Stow-on-the-Wold, England and is known to be two-story heaven for book lovers.




The Many Stories of Isabel Allende

On an early Thursday morning, the phone rings and on the other end is Isabel Allende, talking like she had been up for hours. Allende quickly fell into a conversation, wasting absolutely no time, about her recent title, The Sum of Our Days.
“Its sort of a sequel to another book I wrote 13 years ago, Paula.” Paula was first written as a letter to Allende’s daughter.“My daughter fell in a coma, and everybody- all the doctors -- said she would wake up, that she would     recover.”
Doctors informed Allende of the chance her daughter might have memory loss.
So I started writing a letter to her to remind her for who she was and where she came from... it was the story of her family in Chile and her life,” explained Allende.
As soon as she learned that her daughter suffered severe brain damage and would not recover, Allende decided to change the course of the book.
“The second part of Paula, is no longer a letter, it’s real life. And the book was about my crazy family.”
A decade later is where her recent title, The Sum of Our Days, begins.“There’s a lot that’s happened to my tribe,” says Allende.

Her tribe consists of: her American husband, Willie, her children, her grandchildren, and a neighborhood of people (not necessarily blood-related) who have become a kin to this clan and apart of Allende have extended family.
“We have chosen to be together in this emotional compound that we live in.”
The candid stories open the doors to four households, all three minutes away from one another in the same neighborhood. Everybody has keys to everyone’s house. Every closet is open for someone to rummage through for a dress or for a piece of jewelry.
“If I make beans, it will be for four houses and not just for Willie and I. That idea of the extended family of the village is what the book is about.” There are stories about her husband’s biological children who have struggled with substance abuse.
“One of them, the daughter died. And the other has spent more then 12 years in prison, just for petty stuff, for drugs, I mean nothing serious. The other one was lost for years and years. Now the two boys, are doing so much better, it’s like a miracle.”
She also shares the story about how her daughter-in-law discovering she was lesbian after marrying and having children with Allende’s son.
"When she left my son, she fell in love with my step-son’s girlfriend, the family was broken.”
Allende also reveals how the pressures and the melodrama that surrounds her family and life had almost ended a 20-year marriage. But Allende assures, that things did get better and everybody even the kids, who are teenagers now, are doing great.
“So the book has this thinking of optimism, and hope,” comments Allende.
Although Allende’s tribe has faced numerous trials and tribulations, she has had the strength and support of 5 women who call themselves the “Sisters of Perpetual disorder.” This group of 6 women, (Allende included) are all in their sixties and have been together for more than 15 years.
“In a way, each one has 5 witnesses, and it is en extraordinary process to have a circle of women friends follow your life. My life is always connected to these five women.”
No matter how awful her tour schedule is, Allende always finds a way to be connected to her family and friends and the book, in part, is how important these ties are to people.
When asked what she hopes people will take from this memoir, Allende replied:
“I had nothing in mind. But I am getting hundreds of letters from all over and it seems like there’s nostalgia for family. Especially for people who live in big cities. It seems that the nuclear family, with the lack of friends, lack of community, is a terrible loss. When they read the book they remember how their childhood was and the stories of their grandparents, and they reconnect.”

Lisa See's, Peony in Love

Lisa See’s childhood was split between spending time in Chinatown and in Pasadena. Even though her family moved around a lot when she was kid, china town was always home base for the half Chinese, redhead and freckled author.

“My father’s side of the family had a store in Chinatown and I would spend a lot of vacation time with them there,” See said.

In 1981, their store, F. Susie One Company moved to Pasadena, and has been in business for about 120 years. But growing up in Los Angeles amidst a variety of cultures did not deterred See from understanding her Chinese heritage through her novels. After writing a series of mysteries set in contemporary China with her mother, notable Los Angeles author, Carolyn See, it was only natural that her story subjects shift to explore the culture she was raised in.
“For me a lot of what I’m writing about, when I’m writing, is to figure out what are all these things I’ve been doing all my life that I don’t really understand why and if it’s really pertinent to my life or not,” See said.
Following the highly acclaimed novel, Snowflower and the Secret Fan, the authors latest title, Peony in Love, is set in mid-17th century China when an epidemic of “love-sickness” swept over the country causing young maidens to “waste away” as well as a burst of creative energy from the female population, particularly in the form of writing. There were more women writers, who were being published, than the rest of the world put together at that time. Over a thousand of them are still in print today in China.

Peony in Love follows one such manuscript known as the he Three Wives Commentary, a literary critique on China’s most provocative opera The Peony Pavilion. The words and the story of the opera was thought to be so powerful that China had banned it from having it performed ever again. Even in 2000 when the Lincoln Center was planning on showcasing the full 55 scene, uncut and an uncensored performance, the Chinese government refused to let any of the sets or costumes out of the country.

The opera is considered to be China’s greatest love story, equivalent to Romeo and Juliet. The opera tells the story of a wealthy 16-year-old girl who dreams about a young man in her garden. Shortly after she awakens, she is diagnosed with “love-sickness” and dies. As a ghost she roams the earth and finally meets the young man in her dreams and through true love she is brought back to life.
“This opera, was the first piece of literature in the history of China, in which the main character was not only a woman but a young woman who chose her own destiny,” See explained, “part of choosing her own destiny had to do with the fact that she chose the person to fall in love with, that she chose the person she would marry.”

Peony in Love closely follows the development of the Three Wives Commentary. Three separate wives who were either engaged or married to the same man at different times wrote the literary critique.
“Sometimes it just really struck me how they really did have this really clear understanding of not only about love, but other emotions, and how [their] view of love in particular, changes when your a young girl: from the wife who was engaged to the second wife that was married but had no children, to the last wife who had a son. How their perception changes as women and what they had to say is till pertinent today,” See explains.
Lisa See’s, Peony in Love, is in the perspective of the first wife. Who, like the character in the opera, comes back as a ghost and follow her journey as she tries to navigate the world in this new medium while making sure the book gets published.
“I feel like I’ve been going back to find these lost women's projects and their voices and bring them out and learn from them and experience from them. Finally hear these women for who they were and what they did. I think they’re extraordinary.”


A Meeting of the Minds

Sharing an evening with author Ray Bradbury, film animation legend Ray Harryhausen or science fiction godfather Forrest J Ackerman would be a special occasion. Meeting all three at once - well, that's an extravaganza. On Monday, these legends of sci-fi are getting together at the Mystery & Imagination Bookstore in Glendale for a public discussion of their lives, careers and current projects and to talk to their fans.

But the three have already been good friends for decades, making for an extra-special occurrence, explained bookstore owner Christine Bell. A very long time ago in Los Angeles, these icons of storytelling were just a group of friends full of ideas. "Now, each one has an iconic immortality," said Bell.

"It's hard to believe how long we've known each other," said Ackerman, 91, a writer and editor who started the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland and fostered many fan-zines and literary careers.
In 1938, Bradbury was a recent high-school graduate when he met Harryhausen, the prolific novelist and playwright recalled in an article for London's The Independent. Harryhausen soon showed Bradbury his private collection of dinosaurs which he had created for amateur movies made with stop-motion photography, a technique Harryhausen would perfect in later films such as "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad" (1958) and "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963).
On Saturday, Harryhausen received the Art Directors Guild's Outstanding Contribution to Cinematic Imagery Award during a ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

"I'm so grateful these pictures have lasted. I think they're more appreciated today than when we first released them," said Harryhausen, who at 87 is still working, most recently helping to colorize some of his early films.
Back in the '30s, Harryhausen and Bradbury found common ground with their love of films like "The Lost World" and "King Kong." But it was Ackerman who is credited with jump-starting Bradbury's celebrated writing career.

"In 1939, the world's first science fiction convention was held in New York. Ray was very enthusiastic about attending it. I volunteered the $50 it would take to get him there on the Greyhound. It really changed his life. It charged him up to be a writer," said Ackerman.
The three joined a science fiction club that met every Thursday at Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles and started an amateur magazine for it. It was in that magazine that Bradbury had his very first published story, "Hollerbochen's Dilemma."

"We were looked upon by the outside world as a little peculiar, talking about space platforms and dinosaurs - stuff the average person wasn't thinking about," recalled Harryhausen.
Before starting the club, Harryhausen and Ackerman had met during a 10-cent revival screening of "King Kong" in Hawthorne. An avid collector of movie memorabilia, Ackerman had loaned some original "King Kong" promotional material to the theater, and the young Harryhausen had asked the owners of the theater if he could take one of the posters home.

"I treasured these things. I wasn't about to let him just have it. But we became acquainted immediately, and he too started coming to the science fiction club, and I believe he drew at least one cover for the club magazine," said Ackerman.


Bart Simpson Helps Out PALS

Nancy Cartwright, voice of the loveable mischief Bart Simpson and honorary mayor of North Valley is opening her home for a night of fun: Dancing, Dining, Magic, Fortune Telling, auction, raffles and plenty of poker (Actually, Texas Hold’em), and much more, all to help raise funds for the Devonshire PALS new youth center.

Cartwright’s connection to PALS started immediately after attending her first Chamber of Commerce meeting where she was introduced to the president of PALS. “I was at a point in my career where I wanted to help and use my celebrity status in that way,” Cartwright says, “I get a thrill out of helping people.” In just a short period of time, Cartwright was asked to be on the Board of Directors of PALS and has dedicated much of her time and effort into seeing one particular project through. For the last three years, PALS has been trying to raise enough money to start construction on a new permanent facility.

Currently, PALS serves 200 at-risk kids a week from a temporary facility at the Park Parthenia, Community Family Center in Northridge. PALS is short for Police Activity League Supporters, and hosts a number of activities from tutoring to boxing and helps kids who are considered at-risk. “Kids who are in need of that personal validation that they are unable to get from home,” Carwright explains. That is why is it important for them to know that their community is here for them. “These are good kids, that could be swayed to join gangs and that is why these programs are helpful, working one on one with these kids gives them a sense that they’re worth something.”

In fact the organization’s mission statement states, “PALS promotes trust and understanding between young people and police officers by bringing youth under the supervision and constructive influence of dedicated law enforcement professionals. The program is based on the conviction that young people—if they are reached early enough—can develop strong, positive attitudes toward police officers and the law.”(www.Devonshire-PALS.org)

This is why it is vital for PALS to have a permanent place to not only call home but to adequately accommodate all the kids who walk through their doors. Plans for the new facility include: 5,000 square-foot PALS New Youth Center, Education Room for Studies & Homework, Computer Lab, Library, Community Room/ Mini-Gymnasium for Sports Programs & Activities and Outdoor Sport Courts.

“This grass roots effort is extraordinary!” exclaims Cartwright. Though Cartwright and her crew have been successful with their fundraising efforts, they were still far away from their target goal of 2.5 million. But then came their big break. The Mayor of Los Angeles not only acknowledged Nancy Cartwright’s and everyone’s efforts with a ceremony but also awarded them with a grant of a million dollars towards their goal. This gave PALS the gusto they needed to get things really rolling. Now all they need is to raise $150,000 more to break ground and begin construction for a permanent facility where PALS can call home and expand their programs.

That is why Nancy Cartwright has graciously opened her home to help catapult these fundraising efforts by hosting a Monte Carlo Night! Saturday, September 29th, you can join the festivities and have a night of fun and poker with Nancy and some of her high profile guests. The semi-formal affair also includes a Texas Hold’em Tournament. Attendees will be playing with Poker pros and for prizes. For more information, you can visit the PALS website, Devonshire-PALS.org or Nancycartwright.com


There Once Was an Armenian in Africa 

It was a warm Friday afternoon when I met Raymond Kupelian at his local haunt, Marie Calendar’s. The back bar was dim, covered in dark wood and green vinyl.

“It reminds me of an old English pub,” said Kupelian. That’s why he likes coming here.

Once we settled in, there was no need to look at my list of questions I had prepared for the interview. We began talking with such ease covering a wide range of topics, from his childhood in Lebanon to Hollywood’s portrayal of Africa in recent movies. I was spellbound as he spoke of the series of events that lead him to this extensive literary career.

The beginning of his literary life trace back to his parents. “Mom was a storyteller. She read Turkish coffee cups for fun and could write a whole book just reading one cup. While dad would easily forget to bring home bread, but never,” Kupelian said wagging his finger, “never failed to purchase the Armenian daily paper, Aztag.”

Kupelian didn’t learn to read in Armenian until he was ten. While going to school in Lebanon he was able to read in French and Arabic before learning one word of his native tongue. The only Armenian he knew was from Sunday school songs. “I longed for it,” Kupleian said soulfully. It was only after being admitted into St. Gregory Armenian Catholic School that he began to learn Armenian. “The Armenian Language became my first love!” he exclaimed, “Soon my twin brother and I were fighting over who was going to read Aztag first.”

Though it was the love for the Armenian language that pulled him into writing, what resonates most from his stories are the genuine acts of compassion seen from his characters. Theses traits are embedded in his characters because he, himself is compassionate and has also been on the receiving end of these kind gestures.

Sami Garo, a barbershop owner who also rented Armenian books from his shop in Hajen Tagh.

Using his Easter pocket money, young Kupelian would spend it all renting Sami Garo’s titles. Once, after reading a 400 page romantic novel in four days, young Kupelain went back to the shop with a heavy heart. When he arrived at the barber shop, Sami Garo saw Kupelian from his mirror and stopped shaving the hairy Armenian customer.
“He asked if I didn’t like the story he chose for me. I said, voch, Baron Garo, I found it so exciting I read it before the due date! He came closer, and gave me an affectionate slap and handed me another book. ‘No charge,’ he said.”
To Kupelian the kindness of Sami Garo, the barber, left such a deep impression upon him that even remembering the story left him with tears brimming from his eyes. “He was a god,” Kupelian said, as he rubbed his eyes, “Mashdotz in person.”

However, Kupelian claimed the first catalyst towards his literary career happened when he was seventeen. “I hurt my back. It was a work related accident, a serious one! I would go to work, and as soon as I came home I would lay down a read for hours. I had no social life—reading became my savior.” The second catalyst was his move to Africa.

So, why Africa?

“Everyone always asks me that question,” Kupelian laughed lightly as he leaned back against the vinyl booth.

He discovered Africa through geography and his stamp collection but what sparked the intrigue with the Dark Continent was Tarzan. Apparently, it was the adventures of Tarzan and his movies that motivated Kupelian’s group of friends to sell all their possessions and move away to Africa. As he relayed the story, his “bold” group of friends didn’t even make it through one night on the streets and came back home, earning the nickname Africaxi. It was only Kupelian that actually made the trip into the Bush ten years after his friends first attempt.

“It was a ticket out of poverty and out of the Armenian ghetto,” Kupelian said about his decision to move to Liberia. On the eve of his departure close friends and family gathered at his household for a farewell dinner. “Our great friend, Kacharentz, the writer, and a fine poet made a toast. ‘Parov yeratas.’ he said, ‘go with peace and introduce the African landscape into Armenian Literature. I know you can!’” The toast, in Kupelian’s eyes, was essentially his destiny handed to him.

In fact among the Diaspora authors, Kupelian is the first to not only introduce Africa into Armenian literature, but also introduce genre of adventure into the cultures literary landscape.
“It took me some time to creatively feel the African landscape under my feet,” Kupelian said, compared to other great writers who have written about Africa, like Hemingway or Conrad, who’ve spent only a year in the jungle and wrote masterpieces. “The African in the fullest sense of his humanity, is absent from their work. They used them as décor and figurants.”

His first night in Africa, Kupelian recalls how the natives made a bonfire and danced to the sound of the tom-tom late into the night. “They lived in a compound called a yard. If one of them got sick, his neighbor would feed him and take care of him. They shared the little they had.” Kupelian quickly realized that what the outsider sees of Africa is only a façade created by the thickness of the jungle. To reach the true African nature, one must go into the Bush. “I wanted to reach out and touch that truth behind the façade.”

In living with the people and on the continents soil, Kupelain was able to deeply feel their humanity first before he went in search for the right Armenian words to convey it.

But his struggles didn’t begin there.

“My first year in Liberia was disastrous,” he recalls. Being the first Armenian decent in his profession as an expert in car repair, Kupelian complained about his Lebanese boss who was always broke and delayed pay to his employees. While on the subject of his early trials, Kupelian went on to relay another small story. With his pocket money gone and nothing to buy his meager diet of bananas and peanuts with, Kupelian decided to starve. A young native school girl, from whom he bought his food from sensed that he was hungry, gave him a bunch of bananas and some roasted peanuts. “She succeeded in keeping me alive!” he said, “What a beautiful soul…I felt their suffering as an extension of my own, as the one I endured as a little refugee child.”

“African’s feel close to the plight of those who have endured similar experiences,” speculating that is the reason why he never felt like an outsider during the twenty years he was there. Both cultures have lived under colonial rule for long periods of time and have been branded with inhuman sufferings

Yet, these kernels of human-to-human connection resonate in his first translated anthology of short stories titled, African Symphony. When Kupelian was ready to write about his African experience, he focused the energy of his writing into the social issues troubling the people who lived in newly liberated third world countries. Rather than spending large amounts of time and words into describing and detailing the lush surroundings. By doing so, there is no jungle dividing the natives from the educated class. They are all on the same level. What you have then, and what Kupelian achieves is exposing the humanity in each individual.

“One of the most difficult stories I wrote was ‘A Black Girls White Love.’” The story, in short, was about a young black woman’s vow to give her father a dark-colored grandchild, even if it meant entering a love-less marriage with a man, as long as he was the same skin color as she. She was determined to bare this grandchild to end her father’s secret grief over having light colored grandchildren. But as fate would have it, the young woman was unable to conceive a child. Her father, who had suffered multiple strokes was hanging on to dear life only to hear that his youngest daughter was with child. The Daughter in return, lied to her father about a false pregnancy so that he may finally rest in peace.

The lie was out of love for her father. How times have we lied to our own parents to keep the shadows of disappointment away from their eyes? It’s these types of issues that also erase any color line. These are not specifically black issues, nor are they white/ Armenian issues. They are problems that riddle all of humanity.

What is also very interesting about this collection of short stories is the raw sexual content that is laced with a sensual sensibility. But for being an Armenian text, it came as a surprise.
“There are some puritans who didn’t like my candidness in describing or portraying he African sexually permissive life style,” said Kupelian, “…I came to realize that our timidity in not using a bolder ‘manly’ language we are pushing young readers into other pastures. Armenians are a passionate people. You will not find that in our literature.”
The sexuality described in Kupelian’s prose, in the English translation, is neither abrasive nor vulgar. However, it sometimes lacks heaving emotion that passionate words sometimes create. One wonders if it’s been lost within the cracks of the translation.

The project of translating African Symphony took twenty years in the making was spearheaded by Dr. Ara Sarafian, who at the time was coordinating everything through La Verne University. However the project was stalled after Dr. Sarafian passed away. The final translation was done by Ishkhan Jinbashian and the title is now available. Currently, Kupelian is working on several projects simultaneously; the first is the English translations of his novels, Decadence, and, The Passport. As well as a satirical book, a children’s book and an anthology of essays titled, In Quest of the Truth. Kupelian is seriously considering publishing and releasing these new works on-line.

As our interview came to an end, Kupelian left me with these words:

“I love life, I love my Culture, and I love Humanity.”




Of Love and Political Violence 
A conversation with Micheline Aharonian Marcom

Micheline Aharonian Marcom is the author of Three Apples Fell from Heaven and The Daydreaming Boy. Her latest novel, Draining the Sea, is due in bookstores next month. In her interview with Reporter book reviewer Atina Hartunian, Marcom discussed her new book, her bittersweet travels in Western Armenia and Guatemala, and the transformative powers of memory. 

Hartunian: How did your writing career begin?

Marcom: I never thought I’d become a writer, and I certainly never thought I’d be writing about the Armenian Genocide. But I started writing in my early 20s, a relationship ended—that’s what heartache does, I suppose, pushed me, in any case, to express in language what I was experiencing internally. I started by mostly writing poetry. Then I made an intentional shift to writing prose a few years later, when I was unemployed for several months. Years after that, I ended up taking classes at Mills College (where I sill work, but in a different capacity; at the time I was the assistant director of an education program for high school kids) with one of the professors in the Creative Writing MFA program – her family is also from Lebanon. Eventually, I enrolled in the MFA program. I was 29 when I started the program, and by then I had come around to realize that I wanted to write the story of my grandmother and about the Genocide.

Hartunian: What was that moment of realization like?

Marcom: When I started writing I didn’t write about anything Armenian per se. My short stories were mostly set in the US. One day, I remember particularly, I was hanging out with a group of creative-writing peers, and I wrote a piece, two or three pages long, and it was about my grandmother, whom I didn’t know that much about, in terms of her experiences during the genocide. And I knew that I had stumbled onto the novel I wanted to write—that the few pages I had written was the kernel for a longer piece. It took me years to realize that the stories that I needed to be writing were much closer to home, right up against the bone. This was the story I had inherited, the four or five sentences about my grandmother and her siblings. And although it’s obvious in hindsight, the stories that obsess you are the stories you need to tell.

Hartunian: I understand that Three Apples Fell from Heaven is going to be made into a movie.

Marcom: Yes, José Rivera, the oscar-nominated writer of The Motorcycle Diaries, wrote the screenplay.

Hartunian: Have you worked with him on the screenplay?

Marcom: Not directly. It’s been an interesting collaboration in spirit. He’s a friend of mine, however, and he’s married to a dear friend of mine, she’s Armenian, and we’ve traveled together to a lot of places, including Harput [Kharpert], which is where Three Apples takes place. But he wrote the screenplay on his own, and once he wrote it (he’d done a lot of research), he showed it to me. Right now, they’re shopping the script around to directors. He optioned the novel officially a few months back.

Hartunian: What do you think of the topic of the Armenian Genocide in the arts?

Marcom: Well, in terms of literature, when I began writing Three Apples, there was very little out there. There was [Carol Edgarian’s] Rise the Euphrates, and then [Nancy Kricorian’s] Zabelle, a little before mine [Three Apples Fell from Heaven] came out. Those were the only two books in English-language literature that I knew of. And that’s not very much. I think, for Armenians, the topic of Genocide can be tiresome (“OK, lets move on”). In terms of literary output, I think that there’s room for much more. I think that some of that is happening now by younger writers, which is great.

Hartunian: When you traveled to Western Armenia, what were some of the revelations you had there? Did something mystical happen?

Marcom: It kind of did, yes. I didn’t necessarily expect to feel something when I traveled to Anatolia. I wanted to see it. And at that point I was writing the third book in the “genocide” trilogy: Draining the Sea. There are pieces in the book that are directly taken from experiences during my travels. The scene with the bone boy, for example, where he shows bones found in the desert in Der Zor, that was true. I made the trip to Syria the year before I went to Turkey. I went to Syria, to the Der Zor desert, because the journalist, Robert Fisk, had written an article saying that he went there and he found bones in Der Zor, and I wanted to go see if that was true. It was. We met this Arab caretaker and his son – on whom the bone boy in Draining the Sea is based. The father took care of a monument to honor the Armenian dead. Then, the following year, I went to Turkey. I went to Van. I went to Kars and then ended up in Harput, which is where my Grandparents lived.

Hartunian: Did you meet any Armenians there?

Marcom: No, I didn’t. But once I started talking to people there in private, I would hear stories. Many people talked of their “Armenian grandmother” and how they would hear prayers in Armenian, etc. So, even though Armenians are not there as we once were – and of course it’s a very taboo subject in Turkey, the “Armenian question” as it is referred to – once you actually start talking to people, they acknowledge, individually, that Armenians were there, and also that, for some people, there were Armenian members in their families. There are traces everywhere of the Armenian world.

Hartunian: So there was a sense of an Armenian presence there?

Marcom: Yes, in a way. As my friends and I were walking around Harput, for example, a merchant started befriended us, and later, as we got to know him over tea and cookies, as one does in the Middle East, he said to me and my Sona, José’s wife, “I knew you both were Armenian.” The merchant wasn’t Armenian, he was Kurdish, but he recognized us, despite our American appearance and clothing. It was amazing to go back there. And very sad also.

Hartunian: Why sad?

Marcom: Because, you see, I finally understood on some level what I couldn’t understand before, what it was I had been told in those stories about grandmother. I understood in my body what the loss was like for them—to see the land, to smell the air and feel the place was moving. And it was strange and, for me, unexpected. Harput now is largely deserted, and has been for many years. In fact, I had been told that it was completely abandoned, which is not turned out not to be true. A few people live in Harput, and now there is a budding “amusement park” up there, there are bumper cars and cafes and sweets’ vendors. There is also an enormous nationalist statue honoring some Turkish leader. That was very strange too; and upsetting.

Hartunian: Statues and bumper cars?

Marcom: Pretty much. People go up to Harput, it’s up on a hill, to get out of Elazig and have tea, buy for their children. For me, it was surreal actually. To return to my grandmother’s town, and children are running about eating candies and riding on bumper cars. And then it was somewhat disconcerting, in a way, how kind and friendly people who live there were to us. A Turkish man came up to my friends and said that he had just refurbished a house that was built before the First World War, and he asked us if we wanted to go see it. So we went inside this house, this kind of pre-World War I-style house, a kind of house my grandmother might have lived in. It was wonderful.

You know, you have this weird mirroring experience in Turkey, that these are the people you’ve been raised to think of as your enemy, and yet they eat the food you grew up eating, and their customs are similar and their hospitality is familiar. So it’s very strange, because of this familiarity, and comfort almost—I felt very comfortable with the culture of Turkey. And yet, of course, my own people no longer live on this land because of the awful events of 1915-1917, I can’t forget that either.

Hartunian: Do you think both cultures need each other?

Marcom: I’m not sure if I understand what you mean, but, as I said, there are certainly many similarities in culture, it seems to me. And I think it’s important to deepen the understanding of modern Turks and of modern Turkey—their history did not either end in 1915.


Hartunian: What is the story line of Draining The Sea?

Marcom: It’s a strange book and it was hard to write. It’s about an American man in Los Angeles who is half-Armenian. But he doesn’t really know anything about being Armenian. He becomes obsessed with a young woman from Guatemala who is indigenous, part of the Ixil group, and of the genocide that occurred in Guatemala in the early 1980s. Parts of the book is about that, while other parts are about which histories get told and which are suppressed. And it’s about loneliness in the United States. I think when I turned my gaze to Los Angeles, I realized what a lonely city it is, at least it seems so to me. The book is also about the strange parallels between the Armenian Genocide and the Guatemalan.

Hartunian: Why did you decide to write about the Guatemalan Genocide?

Marcom: Partly because I follow my own obsessions and interests. I went to Guatemala when I first started writing the book, and what interested me initially were these eerie parallels between the two stories: Armenian and Guatemalan. And what I was interested in, and what you can do in literature, is look at these two very different stories, of two very different cultures, one in the “Old World” and one in the “New”, side by side. I was interested in thinking about the Americas and its history, and about the fact that the character in the book doesn’t know his personal history. So part of the journey in the novel, is about the character coming to know what he’s inherited (from his mother, say, about the Armenian Genocide) without knowing the history of the Genocide.

Hartunian: What are the parallels between the Armenian and Guatemalan genocides?

Marcom: One of the major similarities, is that the Guatemalan army carried out the massacres and denied it, both while it was doing it, and afterwards. The only reason that the state doesn’t or can’t deny it any longer, is because the United Nations’ sponsored truth commission wrote a report which affirmed that genocide had occurred. Otherwise, the state of Guatemala would have continued to deny it to this day.

So there is the parallel of denial, which was the first thing that drew my interest me. And then, when you look at the awful material, the barbarity of the genocide and even the language employed, are similar. The indigenous people in Guatemala were called dogs, and treated as such. You debase the “other” and destroy him – just as the Turks did in the First World War with the Armenians, referring to Armenians as “curs” etc., using much of the same language.

I was interested to think about all that in a book and collapse time a little bit. It was a hard book to write, and took the longest of the three books: four years. I had to do a tremendous amount of research. I went to Guatemala five times. I interviewed people there. I read I don’t know how many books—on Guatemala, Central America, the US.

Hartunian: After writing your three books, and given your family’s histories and migration patterns, do you feel a stronger connection to the Armenian identity?

Marcom: Yes, I definitely do. Because to write the books, I traveled a lot, and did a tremendous amount of research over the years, and with those travels and readings, I became very familiar with the material history of the Genocide. I do feel now that I have a better sense of where I come from, in addition to my family’s stories.

I think in part why people feel so lost in America, is that we don’t know our family stories, our blood histories, our old ties to the land. And there is, perhaps, some freedom in this disconnection, but there are also some heavy losses—of continuity, of traditions, and of a rooted sense of who one is,—and these things, I think, are very big things to give up.