“Truth” Is Being Sacrified
Forbidden Homeland: Story of a Diasporan is a memoir about discovering your family’s history and roots in Armenian Genocide and Karabakh Conflict. Why was it important to share your story?
We live in a world where “truth” is being sacrificed for geopolitics and power. Mighty nations are not only proving that “might is right”, but they are also rewriting history to suit their narratives. They have the means to bribe, dine, and wine media folk, academics, and politicians to promote their version of facts in order to influence public opinion, or cover up their true agendas. I wanted to share my story, to show that no matter how much truth is suppressed, it still finds a way to be found. I wanted to give a voice to marginalized nations.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
The hardest thing to write about was my grandmother’s genocide experience. I found out about what had happened to her family during the genocide when I found her relatives here in California. It was only then, that I started understanding the possible signs of trauma I had witnessed in my grandmother while growing up in Lebanon.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Many ideas were important for me to share:
- That America is formed of many Diasporas, and that we have to celebrate our diverse backgrounds, but also realize that many similar reasons have propelled us (or our ancestors) to immigrate to this country. My book has in fact become a talking point and an opportunity to share similar experiences and challenges in our backgrounds.
- We need to get to know each other’s backgrounds in order to be able to understand the foreign policies of this nation. Most of the U.S. foreign policies happen without the knowledge of the American people, however, they are implemented in all of our names and funded by our tax dollars. We should educate ourselves in order to hold the government accountable for its actions or to praise the government for its good deeds abroad. As Americans we value policies that promote freedom, democracy and human rights.
- It was important to share what happened to my family and my homeland over a hundred years ago in order to explain what is happening in Armenia and Artsakh (Karabakh) today. Many things are being taken out of context or fabricated to distract from the truth. A lot of gaslighting. I want my book to raise awareness of the fight between democracy and tyranny happening now in Transcaucasia. Armenia, the only democracy in the region, is being constantly threatened by invasion, by the same perpetrators of the Armenian genocide!
- That the Armenian story is part of the Human Story. We are all connected. The ancient Armenian monuments and churches that Azerbaijan is destroying belong to humanity and to world history, that is why their destruction is called “Cultural Genocide”.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
One thing I hope readers take away from my story is that when people are ignorant about facts, they can be easily manipulated at the whim of leaders. Therefore, education is key in order to question where our money and military assistance are being sent to and for what purpose. The new generation, in particular, needs to learn how to look up facts because without facts we cannot have a future.
With this book, I also hope to give smaller nations and victims of genocide a face and a voice.
Author Links: Black and White Version | Color Version | Barnes and Noble | GoodReads
Using personal accounts of diaspora, author Katia Tavitian Karageuzian delves into her cultural past to start solving mysteries about her family history with a focus on the Armenian Genocide and the ongoing Karabakh conflict.
Karageuzian thought her journey started with the discovery of long-lost relatives, but instead, that discovery led to a decades-long search to reveal the extensive history of American involvement in the destiny of her homeland and a buried record of those living with generational trauma.
As she slowly uncovers the answers she is looking for, Karageuzian also discovers surprising truths along the way—and an inspiring resilience that readers won’t soon forget.
Now, for the first time, she shares both her research and the answers she dug up in order to expose the geopolitics that consistently bury those truths and muffle the current ongoing wars in Transcaucasia.
Posted on March 7, 2023, in Interviews and tagged author, author interview, biography, book, book recommendations, book review, book reviews, book shelf, bookblogger, books, books to read, ebook, Forbidden Homeland, goodreads, indie author, Katia Karageuzian, kindle, kobo, literature, memoir, nonfiction, nook, novel, read, reader, reading, story, Story of a Diasporan, true story, writer, writing. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.
LITERARY TITAN 
As an engineer, I find this extraordinarily well-researched work by Karageuzian a treasure, from an Armenian from Lebanon coming to the USA as a teenager. She has the gift to tell the story, in a deeply personal way from Gemmayze to Bourj Hammoud, cities in Lebanon where the lucky survivors were saved from the Turkish sword during the Genocide of 1915. Most Armenians, have not been told the true history by the survivors, sparing the pain, to their children. She has used her extensive research skills to relate the story of the Genocide, to the current murderous Aliyev regime where Artsakh Armenians, living in their ancestral land, have been surrounded and left to starve in 2020, in an obvious act of ethnic cleansing in a 21st Century World. By living here in California, she discovered her relatives in Malatia, currently in Turkey, a portion of the Armenian Highlands. “ Forbidden Homeland” book (13 full pages of references) she is sharing the results of her research of history with Armenians and hopes her work will benefit many who are not very familiar with their history, as it has done for her.