Peter Balakian will deliver the annual Kenneally Lecture at Stonehill College in Easton Massachusetts on Tues., Oct. 20 at 7 p.m. in the Martin Institute Auditorium. Balakian will discuss his award-winning memoir Black Dog of Fate and the transmission of trauma across generations. The lecture is being sponsored by the Distinguished Speaker Series in Political Science and International Studies, the Martin Institute, and Catholic Jewish Dialogue Committee.
On Oct. 21, Balakian will speak at the Redwood Library and Athaneum, the oldest lending library in America founded in 1747, about growing up in the suburbs of the post-war era and coming to write a memoir about the Armenian Genocide. A reception begins at 5:30 p.m., and the lecture at 6 p.m. Both events are open to the public.
Balakian is the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor at Colgate University. His new books are Ozone Journal and Vise and Shadow: Essays on the Lyric Imagination, Poetry, Art, and Culture both from the University of Chicago Press.
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My father was from Tokat and was a genocide survivor who made it with his mother after his father was shot and his siblings died in an orphanage from starvation. His narrative is one of courage and with that he taught his three children the importance of gratitude for being alive and all that that meant. He did not embrace the role of the victim but instead taught us what it meant to be Armenian, how we are about family, about hard work, how we don’t believe in following as that is what leads to death. That lesson to think outside the box stays with me. I married a man from Thessaloniki and we live in Brookline. Both our families are from neighboring provinces in Asia Minor.
I admire Peter Balakian and his work.