Haigazian University Press and Hairenik Press have launched the Armenian Memory Book Series with the publication of My Native Village: Okhou by Parounag Topalian, bringing a landmark tradition of Armenian historical and cultural memory to new generations of readers.
Originally published in Armenian by Hairenik Press in Boston in 1943, My Native Village: Okhou (Im Hayreni Kiughs: Okhou) reconstructs the world of Okhou, an Armenian village in the Ottoman Empire, through the recollections of a survivor writing nearly three decades after the Armenian Genocide. The new English edition, translated by Simon Beugekian, is jointly published by Haigazian University Press and Hairenik Press.
Preserving Communities Through Memory
Armenian memory books, or houshamadyans, are a distinctive literary and historical genre created primarily by survivors and descendants of the Armenian Genocide. Bringing together history, ethnography, geography, genealogy, folklore, photographs, maps, dialects, memoirs, traditions, accounts of daily life, and narratives of genocide and exile, these works sought to reconstruct communities that had been destroyed and populations that had been dispersed.
Beyond their value as historical records, memory books served as cultural artifacts and acts of resistance against erasure. They also became emotional roadmaps through which displaced Armenians preserved, reconstructed, and reimagined their homes in exile.
The Armenian Memory Book Series will republish significant Armenian memory books, bring previously unpublished works into print, and make important texts available to English-language readers. Volumes will also feature critical commentary and new research, placing the communities and memory books they document within the broader history and cultural heritage of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and surrounding regions.
From One Ancestral Village to a Wider Series
The series grew out of a proposal by George Aghjayan to translate the memory books of his ancestral hometown of Palu. Discussions among Aghjayan, Haigazian University President Rev. Dr. Paul Haidostian, and series co-editors Antranig Dakessian and Khatchig Mouradian transformed that initial project into a broader initiative encompassing Armenian towns and villages across the former Ottoman Empire.
“The authors of these memory books undertook the formidable task of reconstructing the social, cultural, and physical worlds of communities destroyed by genocide and exile,” Dakessian and Mouradian write in their introduction to the series. “Their work preserved invaluable historical knowledge while creating enduring monuments of memory for descendants and future generations.”
The publication of My Native Village: Okhou marks the beginning of a wide-ranging series intended to make these extraordinary repositories of Armenian history and memory accessible to scholars, descendants of the communities they document, and general readers.
More than eight decades after Topalian first published his account, My Native Village: Okhou introduces English-language readers to both a lost Armenian village and the remarkable tradition through which survivors sought to ensure that such communities would not disappear from memory.