Author: Emil Lazarian

The International Armenian Literary Alliance, Armenian-American Action Network, Fikra Magazine, Mizna, the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest), the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), and Writers Against the War on Gaza on December 10 are hosting a virtual reading, “Who Remembers?”: Armenian-Palestinian Solidarities. Registeration is required.

This reading convenes Armenian and Palestinian writers to denounce the normalization of genocidal violence, in solidarity with those under siege in Gaza. Through the reading of poems, fiction, and personal essays, this event will address interlocking historical injustices affecting Palestinians and Armenians. It’s staged in opposition to Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, antisemitism, and anti-Armenian racism, in recognition that there can be no justice until all are free.

Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank are now witnessing the escalation of an ongoing campaign of genocidal violence. As of November 26, that campaign has killed more than 14,000 Palestinians, over 5,000 of them children. Hospitals, schools, and refugee camps have been regular targets of continuous bombardment. Thousands have been forcibly displaced from northern Gaza in what has been described as the repetition of the 1948 Nakba, or Catastrophe.

Six weeks earlier, more than 100,000 Indigenous Armenians were bombarded and forcibly displaced from the Republic of Artsakh in an act of ethnic cleansing, after enduring nine months of blockade and what a former ICC prosecutor termed “genocide by starvation.” Their mass deportation along the Lachin Corridor raised the specter of the 1915 Armenian Genocide — the Mets Yeghern, or Great Crime.

In the efforts to free Palestine, to liberate Artsakh, and across liberation struggles, poets and writers have borne witness, remembered, and demanded justice.  

This reading is co-hosted by the International Armenian Literary Alliance, the Armenian-American Action Network, Fikra Magazine, Mizna, the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest), the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), and Writers Against the War on Gaza.

The reading will take place via Zoom on December 10 at 9:30 a.m. PST / 11:30 a.m. CST / 12:30 p.m. EST / 7:30 p.m. Palestine / 9:30 p.m. Armenia. It will also serve as a fundraiser for Palestine Legal and for All for Armenia.

Readers and co-organizers of the event are:

• Nancy Agabian is a writer, teacher, and literary organizer, working in the spaces between race, ethnicity, cultural identity, feminism and queer identity. Her recent novel “The Fear of Large and Small Nations” was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged Fiction. She is the author of Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter (Aunt Lute Books, 2008), a memoir that was honored as a Lambda Literary Award finalist for LGBT Nonfiction and shortlisted for a William Saroyan International Writing Prize, and Princess Freak (Beyond Baroque Books, 2000), a collection of poetry and performance texts.
• Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is an Armenian-born writer, artist, and researcher residing in Glendale, CA. She was a 2021 visiting Mellon Professor of the Practice at Occidental College in the Department of Art and Art History. She holds a PhD in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania. Her book, “The Institute for Other Intelligences,” was released by X Artists’ Books in 2022. Her writing and commentary have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, Meghan Markle’s Archetypes, AI & Society, and in the UT Press collection, We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora. 
• Sophia Armen is a community organizer and writer, born and raised in Los Angeles. She is the Co-Director of Armenian-American Action Network and The Feminist Front. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Armenian Weekly, The Electronic Intifada, and in We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora, an anthology of essays with University of Texas Press. She is a descendant of genocide survivors from Kharpert, Hadjin, Istanbul and Van
• Nancy Kricorian is the author of the novels “Zabelle,” “Dreams of Bread and Fire,” and “All the Light There Was.” Her essays and poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Guernica, Parnassus, Minnesota Review, The Mississippi Review and other journals. She has taught at Barnard, Columbia, Rutgers, Yale, and New York University, as well as for Teacher & Writers Collaborative in the New York City Public Schools. She participated in the 2010 Palestine Festival of Literature and taught at the Palestine Writing Workshop in Birzeit in 2011. Her new novel about Armenians in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War will be published by Red Hen Press in 2025. 
• Micaela Kaibni Raen is a Palestinian American queer femme-dyke, mother, multi-genre writer, visual artist, and activist. She grew up in the Little Arabia community in California and graduated from Chapman University. During that time, she became a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers, Inc., ACT UP! and Queer Nation. She has been a community organizer for over 35 years in North America and is committed to international human rights, especially that of Indigenous and displaced peoples, women, LGBTIQ communities and those affected by HIV+/AIDS. Her work appears in Bint el Nas; Mizna; Koukash Review; Rowayat Literary Journal; Yellow Medicine Review; The Poetry of Arab Women; A Different Path; El Ghourabaa: A Queer and Trans Arab and Arabophone Anthology; and Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora.
• Mai Serhan is Palestinian-Egyptian writer, editor and translator. She earned her MA in Arabic Literature from the American University in Cairo and an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford. An extract from her forthcoming memoir, “Return is a Thing of Amber,” was a finalist for the Narratively Memoir Prize and her poetry collection, “CAIRO: the undelivered letters,” won her the Centre for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Award 2022. Visit the website to find more on Mai’s work.

The International Armenian Literary Alliance supports and celebrates writers by fostering the development and distribution of Armenian literature in the English language. While the majority of IALA’s members are of Armenian descent, our community encompasses people from all over the world who speak many languages. We focus on literature in the English language because of its global reach, but our aim is to operate beyond any linguistic barriers.

The Armenian-American Action Network is an advocacy and research organization fighting anti-Armenian racism, teaching Armenian-American history, and forwarding civil rights, immigrant rights, and refugee rights for Armenian and all communities in the United States. Founded in 2021, we fight and document instances of anti-Armenian discrimination and work for representation, equity, and power for the Armenian-American community.

Fikra is an online Palestinian literary magazine founded in 2022. We publish essays, short stories, poetry, and visual art in both Arabic and English. Fikra Magazine is a platform for Palestinians and by Palestinians. We don’t accept funding from governments or politically affiliated donors to ensure complete editorial independence.

Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For more than twenty years, we have been creating a decolonized cultural space to reflect the expansiveness of our community and to foster exchange, examine ideas, and engage audiences in meaningful art.

The Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest) is a cultural initiative committed to the creation of language and ideas for combating colonialism in the 21st century.The festival was created as an act of cultural solidarity with Palestine by a group of international cultural figures brought together by Founding Chair, Ahdaf Soueif, in 2008. Since then PalFest has run an annual festival in which international authors combine with their Palestinian counterparts for free, public events in cities across Palestine.

BY CATHERINE YESAYAN

Due to Azerbaijan’s relentless military aggression, as of September, 2023 more than 120,000 Armenians from Artsakh were forced to leave their homes. Yet again, Armenians communities across the globe are organizing fundraisers to send aid to our compatriots. 

The evacuees crossed Artsakh’s border and settled mainly in the southern parts of Armenia. Among those individuals, some 30,000 are students who have been left without the necessary financial resources to meet their basic needs, including receiving an educational.

To collect funds and to raise awareness for the besieged victims, the students and staff of Glendale Community College partnered with the Armenian Educational Foundation to mobilize the community and raise the necessary funds for affected students now in Armenia. 

Glendale Community College reflects a diverse and multifaceted cultural mix of students and staff, with approximately thirty percent of the students being of Armenian descent. 

A group of active and concerned students, alongside some members of the Armenian Students Association — one of the most active student clubs on campus — partnered with the AEF and started their initial fundraising in mid-October, 2023. To  further publicize this collaborative effort, and to ultimately raise public awareness about the Artsakh crisis, they organized a special concert/fundraiser event on Tuesday, November 21 in the GCC Auditorium. I was invited to this event.

Since 1950, the mission of the AEF has been to offer financial assistance to Armenian Educational institutions, as well as to Armenian students, to help them acquire a decent education in schools, colleges, and universities all around the world.

I arrived a bit early to the fundraising event. Outside the auditorium, the committee had arranged a light buffet and a table for donations. 

As I entered the auditorium, my eyes caught a large 8’x4’ canvas painting with a group of students and staff working on it — adding their own personal touches. 

The painting was the brainchild of Prof. Gagik Labadzhyan, a chemistry professor at GCC. At first glance, I noticed that the painting carried the picture of a pomegranate tree and the twin peaks of Mt. Ararat. 

Later, I found out that it had a much deeper symbolism, representing Armenian culture. It was a dramatic interpretation on many levels.

The pomegranate tree, bearing dozens of bright red fruits, was placed in the center and enveloped the entire painting. In Armenian culture, the pomegranate represents fertility and  eternity.

The top part of the tree-bark morphed into the mythical Phoenix, which symbolizes rebirth from the ashes of historic calamities. The wings of the phoenix masterfully blended with the twin peaks of Mt. Ararat. The picture on the canvas was completed with the help of the audience at the conclusion of the event. It matched perfectly with the main message of the event: Hope and resilience for the future.

The event was opened by emcees Ani Isaiants and Yervand Garagossian. They reported that, prior to the event, the organizing committee had managed to collect $6,500 in donations and had set a goal of reaching $30,000 by the end of this year.

The cultural, entertainment, and fundraising portions were smoothly and thoughtfully interwoven throughout the 90 minutes of this event. The entertainment acts included a traditional Armenian dance, “Shalakho,” by Lilia’s dance studio, two solo songs accompanied by piano, two poetry recitals, and one musical duduk piece, featuring a song by Komitas.

Senator Antony Portantino delivering remarks during the fundraising event

California State Senator Anthony Portantino, among several other dignitaries and guests, attended the event.  Portantino shared a few invaluable points with the audience during the event, and declared his unconditional allegiance to the Armenian community and their causes.

Anna Miskarova, the executive director of the AEF, played a short video on the activities and the history of the organization. She then gave a detailed account on an emergency fund specifically earmarked to help the forcefully displaced Armenian students from Artsakh to meet their basic survival and educational needs.

A total of $3,000 was raised during the event, which was then matched by a generous anonymous donor.

The event was closed with the viewing of a documentary by Vic Gerami on the brutal treatment of Armenians in Artsakh. It was my absolute pleasure to be there and observe all that I did,

Catherine Yesayan is a regular contributor to Asbarez, with her columns appearing under the “Community Links” heading. She can be reached at [email protected].