By Aisha McAdams

Photo By: Aisha McAdams

New York Times best seller author, Dr. Peter Balakian, shared details about his memoir on the Armenian Genocide, Black Dog of Fate, to members of the Stonehill community this past October.  

Nearly 200 Stonehill students and local community members gathered to listen to Balakian deliver “The Transmission of Trauma Across Generations: Growing up in Suburbia and Writing a Memoir about the Armenian Genocide,” on Tuesday, Oct. 20 at 7 p.m.. 

Balakian, the head of the creative writing department and an english professor at Colgate University, took part of the annual James J. Kenneally Lecture in the Jewish-Christian Relations in Martin Institute.  

Balakian’s lecture focused more on the transmission of trauma across generations than the history of the Armenian Genocide.  Balakian kept the lecture flowing with excerpts from his memoir that talked more about the process of deciding to decode the hidden messages from his grandmother rather than the stories themselves that he uncovered. 

“It wasn’t until the late 1960s and 70s when I decided to start decoding the truth about my grandmother. The U.S. was undergoing a transformation through various parts.  One of those transformations had to do with the emergence of what I would call the human rights culture. This was a new feature in the American culture that grew out of the African-American civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement; and the second wave of feminism,” said Balakian.  

Many students who attended this event were disappointed with his lecture because of this.  Students like Taylor Landers, who had attended for class, expected Balakian to cover more about the stories he uncovered from his grandmother instead of just recapping parts of the memoir. 

“I would have wanted to know more about the genocide itself and how that affected his family rather than only hearing passages from his memoir.  Although they were interesting I expected there to be more about the personal encounters of his grandmother.  Sometimes I felt that he was just promoting his book,” said Landers.  

Balakian followed his lecture opening up the floor to questions and comments but was only able to cover a few of them.  His responses were elaborate and because of that and a time constraint many questions were left unanswered.  

 “I thought overall it was informative since I didn’t know much about the topic before going into it but I wish he would’ve answered more questions after a little more in depth” said Laura O’Malley, a junior rugby player at Stonehill.  

Book signing was held after where individuals could ask more questions and get their Christmas shopping done early.