Black Dog of Fate
by Peter Balakian
His family never spoke of the genocide. He finally asked why.
For you if
you carry a family history of catastrophe that was never named and need someone to show you how to start asking
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$20 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
Balakian grew up in an Armenian American family in New Jersey where the genocide was never discussed — present as a weight, an absence, a set of behaviors that didn't make sense until he started asking questions. This memoir reconstructs both his American childhood and the Armenian genocide of 1915, in which over a million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman government in the first genocide of the 20th century. A dispatch from inside the specific grief of inheriting a catastrophe that your family survived by never speaking of it. One of the most important diaspora memoirs ever written.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Caucasus
- Voice
- Written by a Caucasus author
- Topics
- armenian genocide
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Indian Horse(2017)
dir. Stephen S. Campanelli
Hockey couldn't save him from what came before.
Torn from his Ojibway family and committed to a Catholic residential school in 1950s Ontario, Saul Indian Horse survives institutional abuse and finds an unlikely refuge in hockey — though the game can't undo what the school did. Adapted from Richard Wagamese's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in refusing to let athletic triumph erase institutional abuse — Saul's hockey talent doesn't heal the residential school system that tried to break him. Pedagogical in showing how trauma and skill can coexist in the same body without cancelling each other out.
Is God Is(2026)
dir. Aleshea Harris
Two sisters. One mission from God: kill their father.
Twin sisters marked since childhood by disfiguring burn scars are contacted by the mother they believed dead, who reveals their father set the fire that scarred them — and sends her daughters on a cross-country mission to kill him. Adapted from Aleshea Harris's own award-winning play.
Why it’s here: Punk in framing righteous vengeance as a mission handed down by a mother rather than a moral failing to overcome — the film refuses to let "forgiveness" be the default answer to abuse. Pedagogical in tracing how violence passed down through a family can be interrupted, redirected, or repeated, letting the two sisters choose differently from each other.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
How to Read the Air
Dinaw Mengestu
Reconstructing a father through his parents' journey.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Everything is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer
A young American goes to Ukraine to find his grandfather's savior.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Breath Eyes Memory
Edwidge Danticat
A Haitian girl carries her mother's trauma in her own body.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Obasan
Joy Kogawa
Canada interned its Japanese citizens. One woman breaks the silence.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
