The Fire These Times 130/ Armenian-ness and Solidarity in a Changing World w/ Karena Avedissian and Anna
This is a conversation with Karena Avedissian and Anna, and a collaboration with their podcast Obscuristan.
The main thread of our conversation was about Armenian-ness and how complicated of an identity it is due to the old and transnational history of Armenians. Some have ancestry in the Ottoman empire and therefore feel closer to the Levant, especially after the genocide which also exiled so many to my part of the world. Others lived under the Russian empire and then the USSR. There are of course those who moved to Europe and North America and elsewhere as well.
Karena is of Armenian-Iranian origins and grew up in the US, but lives in Armenia. Anna is from Artsakh and Armenia and is currently in the US. So we inevitably had to also talk about Armenian proximity to Whiteness in the US and why it's important to understand it.
We brought up Ukraine a lot as well as Russia's full-scale invasion last year prompted them to launch their podcast which partly seeks to decolonize Russian history and imperialism. We also brought up Azerbaijan's ongoing violence against Armenians in Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh.
Also: Lebanon as Beirut has a special place in Armenian history, something I didn't really know until I myself visited Armenia.
Also: Gilmore Girls, coz why not.
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The Fire These Times
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Mentions and Book Recommendations:
Karena:
- The Politics of Exile by Elizabeth Dauphinee
Anna:
- The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition by Thenmozhi Soundararajan (who will be a guest soon as well!)
- Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis