WATERTOWN, Mass.—“Finding Zabel Yessayan,” a 40-minute documentary tracing the eventful life of an outstanding Armenian writer, will be shown at the Watertown Public Library on Thursday evening, June 12, at 7 p.m.
Back by popular demand, the film was originally shown in the Boston area in 2011 and inspired members of the Armenian International Women’s Association (AIWA) to translate into English and publish two of Yessayan’s books: The Gardens of Silihdar, a memoir, and My Soul in Exile, a novel. The two books were recently released, to great popular acclaim, and numerous requests were made for a re-screening of the film.
Writer, activist, and feminist Zabel Yessayan (1878-1943) was one of the most prominent Armenian intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her prolific writing in a variety of genres (short stories, essays, novels, travelogues) reflects the cataclysmic events of her times and enjoyed great popularity when they were published. Yet, today they are almost forgotten.
The documentary, a first step in reviving Yessayan’s memory, was filmed in Armenia and prepared by Lara Aharonian, a native of Lebanon who heads the Women’s Resource Center in Yerevan, and Dr. Talin Suciyan, a native of Istanbul now teaching at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany.
A native of Istanbul, Yessayan (born Zabel Hovhannisian) graduated from the Armenian Holy Cross secondary school there and became one of the first Ottoman-Armenian women to study abroad when she went to Paris and enrolled in the Sorbonne. In Paris she married the painter Dickran Yessayan, with whom she had two children, Sophie and Hrant. Her first novel, The Waiting Room, published in 1903, takes place in Paris and explores themes that were to become central to her work—exile and alienation.
Back in Istanbul, she was appointed in 1909 as a member of an Armenian fact-finding delegation to Adana, where she witnessed the aftermath of the bloody massacres that had just taken place. Her classic account of this experience, published as Among the Ruins, is widely regarded as one of her best works.
The only woman on the “black list” of the Armenian intellectuals arrested on the night of April 24, 1915, Yessayan managed to elude the police and escape to Bulgaria. The end of the war found her working in the Near East, organizing the relocation of refugees and orphans. In the 1920’s, Yessayan visited Soviet Armenia and decided to move there in 1933, becoming a teacher of literature at Yerevan State University and continuing her writing with the novella Shirt of Fire and the autobiographical novel, The Gardens of Silihdar. A victim of Stalin’s purges, she was exiled in 1937 and died, in unknown circumstances, likely in 1943.
The public is cordially invited to attend the screening of the documentary, free of charge, at the Watertown Free Public Library, on 123 Main St., in Watertown. The event is co-sponsored by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR), and AIWA. A reading from the books will follow.
For more information about the screening or about Zabel Yessayan, contact AIWA by calling (617) 926-0171 or e-mailing info@aiwainternational.org.
Guest Contributor
Be the first to comment