David Kherdian

David Kherdian re-creates his mother's voice in telling the true story of a childhood interrupted by one of the most devastating holocausts of our century. Vernon Dumehjian Kherdian was born into a loving and prosperous family. Then, in the year 1915, the Turkish government began the systematic destruction of its Armenian population.

The Story of an Armenian Girl

The Road from Home

Jeni Enjaian

I have fond memories of reading this book back in the late 90s when the book first came out. I eagerly devoured the book, even underlining references to Armenia and the Genocide on the title page and a few pages after. Finally I had found a book that discussed the Genocide, something I have known about for as long as I can remember growing up in an Armenian family. 

I picked the book back up recently since I plan to use it now with my students. I knew that the book would have a lot more to offer and be a lot more relatable for my students than the dry, sometimes boring "Farewell to Manzanar" which I have struggled to teach with my Gifted and Talented students for two years.

Kherdian captures the voice of the 9-15 year old girl told through the memories of an older woman, his mother. He does this job well. So many other books have narrators this age but the narrator sounds much older than they actually are. At first I was concerned at the "simplicity" of the narrator's voice but then I had a chance to compare the narrator's voice with that of the fictional narrator of the book I am reading currently, a narrator that is supposedly 11 years old.

The most atrocious parts of the Genocide do not make a direct appearance on the pages of this novel; they appear only in the vague references of the child-created memories of an older woman. The way that Veron refers to the terrible things that happened in her life and to the people around her evokes terrible beauty that a teacher can use to provoke deep thinking from her students and comparisons to the modern day. When I saw that Veron had escaped from Turkey and landed on the Greek island of Lesbos, I immediately thought of the 2015 refugee crisis and how many other refugees made that same journey just under a hundred years later.

I definitely recommend this book and cannot wait to share this experience with my students.

The Road from Home The Story of an Armenian Girl

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