Book Review | We Are All Armenian

We Are All Armenian
Edited by Aram Mrjoian
University of Texas Press, 2023
224 pp.
$35

When I was first asked to read and review Aram Mrjoian’s We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora, I admit I was a little hesitant. I love to read, but in selecting a book, I look for something quite particular–an escape. I want to leave my life behind and travel to some unknown world. I want to check the fabricated map at the beginning of the book to remind me where I’ve been. I want to hear words spoken that haven’t been said before and feel like I, too, have something to say. I want to imagine characters with eyes a shade so blue they don’t exist here in our natural world. I want to live inside my mind even if just for a chapter or two. So when I was encouraged to read a book about the diasporan experience, I thought to myself I am the diasporan experience. I feared there was nowhere for me to go, nothing for me to learn. How incredibly different could other Armenians’ experiences be from my own? How beautifully naïve of me.