Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir

Peter Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir (1997) tells the story of the author’s path to embracing his Armenian identity and understanding the legacies of a dark history. Born into the comfortable and consumerist suburbs of mid-century American suburbia, Balakian experienced the vestibules of his family’s Armenian culture mostly through the influence of his maternal grandmother. As he grew up, he caught other glimpses of the family’s heritage; in particular, home rituals in their religion, and in occasional passing references to the lost homeland. Not until his young adulthood did he learn about the events of the Armenian Genocide, which the Ottoman Empire launched in 1915. Knowing the painful root of his family’s enduring silence about their past allows the author to see his relatives in a new light and become an influential voice of the Armenian diaspora beyond his family.

Balakian discusses the challenges and implications of breaking the silence surrounding past trauma and exposing historical truths. Those efforts prove all the more difficult in the case of the Armenian Genocide because, through the 20th century, Turkey and groups all over the globe effectively denied that the genocide ever happened, refusing Armenians the right to heal, comprehend, and forgive.