My Grandmother: A Memoir
An urgent, passionate memoir of the author’s discovery of her Muslim grandmother’s true Armenian Christian identity.
When Fethiye Çetin was growing up in the small Turkish town of Maden, she knew her grandmother as a happy and universally respected Muslim housewife. It would be decades before her grandmother told her the truth: that she was by birth a Christian and an Armenian, that her name was not Seher but Heranush, that most of the men in her village had been slaughtered in 1915, that she, along with most of the women and children, had been sent on a death march.
She had been saved (and torn from her mother’s arms) by the Turkish gendarme captain, who went on to adopt her. But she knew she still had family in America. Could Fethiye help her find her lost relations before she died?
There are countless Turks whose grandparents could tell them similar stories. But in a country that maintains the Armenian genocide never happened, such talk can be dangerous.
In her heartwrenching memoir, Fethiye Çetin breaks the silence.
2010 | ISBN 9781876756857 | Paperback | 200 x 130 mm | 115 pp
Reviews
A moving read...
—Selina Wright, The Examiner
My Grandmother takes the reader into a dark period in Turkish history with the light touch of a well-told fable.
—The Age, A2
A powerful memoir
—Lucy Sussex, The Age
An affectionate family memoir, gentle and humorous, with richly painted character portraits and tender evocation of the author's and her grandmother's childhoods.
—Catherine Armitage, The Weekend Australian
It is hard to believe that it is translated from Turkish to English because it is beautifully written and held my attention from start to finish.
—Peter Shaw, Waikato Times
A heartbreaking tale of an extraordinary woman, and of a denied history, recounted with disarming directness and compassion. Shocking and profound, moving and redemptive, Fethiye Cetin's My Grandmother is a testimony to the healing power of story, and a quiet, dignified cry for justice and recognition of one of the darkest episodes of the twentieth century.
—Arnold Zable
It's a tiny book, only 116 pages long, but it contains a monumental truth, another sign that one and a half million dead Armenians will not go away. It's called My Grandmother: a Memoir and it's written by Fethiye Cetin and it opens up graves. For when she was growing up in the Turkish town of Marden, Fethiye's grandmother Seher was known as a respected Muslim housewife. It wasn't true. She was a Christian Armenian and her real name was Heranus. We all know that the modern Turkish state will not acknowledge the 1915 Armenian Holocaust, but this humble book may help to change that. Because an estimated two million Turks – alive in Turkey today – had an Armenian grandparent.
—Robert Fisk
Çetin’s gripping and thought-provoking memoir inhabits the fault lines between personal recall, inherited memory and history. It reaches towards an understanding, if not of the events, then of their aftermath.
—The Independent (UK)
It’s a quietly powerful work, modest but courageous.
—William Armstrong, Hurriyet Daily News