CBR18 Bingo – Bird: a history teacher who deserves to be given one. And the phoenix and crane gave me enough words to review this book. But mostly the teacher.
Armaveni is about Nadine finding her family’s history. It’s based on the author Nadine Takvorian’s own life and the author notes what she changed for the narrative. Most of that was temporally condensing her experiences and making herself younger than she really was when she experienced them.
Nadine is an Armenian-American girl in high school. She lives with her parents and brother, she hangs out with her friends, and she pesters her family to tell her about their experiences during the Armenian genocide. Normal stuff.
Because Nadine’s family is also from Turkey, she regularly fails arbitrary litmus tests that her fellow Armenian-American teens administer. Her history teacher is a Turkish supremacist who hates Armenia, I think. She talks to people who have never heard of Armenia or Armenian people. It’s an awkward position to be in, but Nadine copes well. (Or maybe she doesn’t, because she keeps on talking about genocide.)
The phoenix watches Nadine through her travels. From bedtime stories to dreams to coffee, it’s there. I’m not savvy about birds or symbolism, but I think the phoenix is as symbolic as a bird can get.
The groong, or crane, is a less obvious symbol and I needed to do some independent research (AKA 2 minutes of googling) to see that it has a lot of significance to Armenians.
This is a children’s book. I didn’t realize that when I picked it up and I had some questions. All those questions were answered when I figured out the target audience. Generalization and simplification suddenly wasn’t an issue when I realized the book wasn’t for me.
I still liked it.
