105-YEAR-OLD REALIZES DREAM OF CITIZENSHIP
By Teresa Watanabe, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times , CA
Oct 26 2006
Iranian-born Sona Babai was among 7,000 others who became U.S. citizens
at ceremonies in Pomona. She joined family here six years ago.
Sona Babai counts good health, a loving mother-in-law and 10 children
as the biggest blessings of a long and fruitful life.
But there was one more thing she wanted: American citizenship.
So the native of Iran placed her hand over her heart, pledged
allegiance to the flag and Wednesday became one of the nation’s newest
citizens to be sworn in.
At 105 years old, she is also one of the oldest.
Before a stage festooned with American flags, Babai joined 7,000 others
from 132 countries who became American citizens at naturalization
ceremonies Wednesday at the Pomona Fairplex. But the petite woman
with clear brown eyes and snowy white hair cut a distinctive figure
as several news cameras recorded her slow walk to the front of the
cavernous hall, stooped but steady, unassisted except for a cane.
When a ceremony official announced, “Excuse me, we have a lady
that’s 105 years old – and she’s walking!” the crowd erupted in claps
and cheers.
Babai said she wanted to naturalize as a sign of gratitude to America
for embracing her children, four of whom live here, and allowing
their families to thrive as restaurateurs, business consultants,
architects, engineers, dentists and other professionals.
“America is a big umbrella that lets a lot of people underneath to be
safe,” Babai said in her native Azari language, which was translated
by her son, Antoine Babai. “Because of the good hearts of American
people, I want to be part of them.”
Marie Sebrechts, spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship
and Immigration Services, said research indicated that Babai was
the fourth oldest person ever to naturalize. The oldest, she said,
was a 117-year-old Armenian immigrant who became a citizen in Los
Angeles district ceremonies in 1997.
Antoine Babai said his mother still threads needles, has 20/20 vision
and needs no hearing aid. Her mind is still so sharp she can tell her
daughter in Tehran in exactly which cabinet in which room to find a
particular household item, he added.
Both nature and good nurturing account for her longevity, the family
said. Her eldest brother lived to age 117, and her younger siblings
range in age from 95 to 101.
Growing up in the unpolluted environment of a rural farming village
in northwest Iran also helped, Antoine Babai said. In her native
Gharahbagh, a 400-person village of vineyards and almond trees,
Babai’s family grew their own food, slaughtered their own livestock
for meat, churned their own butter and heated their ovens with patties
of animal dung.
“There were no preservatives, no chemicals, nothing,” Antoine
Babai said. “I believe one reason she’s lived this long is that the
foundation of her life was natural.”
Babai herself says as much when asked the secret of her longevity.
“Clean air, fresh food and good family,” she said.
But Babai also endured hardships. She lived through three major
political upheavals in Iran, including the Islamic Revolution that
she criticizes for using religion to justify such acts as seizing
private property. Many of her relatives were killed in the eight-year
Iran-Iraq War, she said.
As a child, she used to hide in water wells to escape murderous tribes
who would ravage her village.
She was even kidnapped at age 12 as a bride for a distant relative
smitten by her beauty, according to her son. But the adventure had
a happy ending. She produced 10 children over an 84-year marriage
and grew to love her mother-in-law so much that she still kisses her
picture every night at bedtime.
Her link to America began as it has for so many immigrants: through
a desire to give her children a first-class education and unlimited
opportunities.
Neither Babai nor her husband Mokhtar, who died in 1991 at age
103, ever learned to read or write. But they knew the value of an
American education, so Antoine and another son came to the U.S. to
study advertising design and engineering, respectively, at Louisiana
State University.
The two brothers eventually settled in Palm Desert and opened a French
restaurant. Two sisters followed and settled in Irvine. Today, Babai
boasts six children, 13 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
The children obtained a green card for their mother and brought her
to Palm Desert six years ago, after their father died in Tehran.
Her request to become a citizen surprised Karan Kler, executive
director of Coachella Valley Immigration Service and Assistance Inc.
But he said Babai told him: “By becoming a citizen, I can show to
the world that it is never too late to give back.”
Because of his client’s medical conditions, Kler managed to obtain
waivers excusing her from the English and civic tests required of
most prospective citizens. But Babai sailed through her interview
with immigration officials – telling them, among other things, that
she would bear arms to defend the United States.
War was not on her mind Wednesday. Asked what she would do as a new
citizen, Babai replied:
“I’m an American. I’m going to vote.”

STATE STRUCTURES AND NGOS FOR THE SAKE OF HUMAN DIGNITY AND SECURITY DEFENCE
National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia
Oct 26 2006
On October 24 Mr. Tigran Torosyan, President of the National Assembly,
received the delegation headed by Mr. Valentin Varennikov, deputy of
the State Duma, President of the International League for the Defence
of Human Dignity and Security, General of the Army. The MP Mr. Hrant
Khachatryan and Mr. Fadey Sargsyan, Adviser to the Prime Minister of
the Republic of Armenia, participated in this meeting.
Expressing thanks for the reception Mr. Varennikov conveyed best
regards of Mr. Boris Grizlov, Speaker of the State Duma of the Russian
Federation and presented the objective of their mission, which is
to establish the NGO – International League for the Defence of Human
Dignity and Security also in Armenia. Its necessity was substantiated
with the necessity to work with the state structures, for finding the
solutions of the issues, which are especially of great importance
for the society. Mr. Varennikov noted that there are already 12
countries in the League, which will become a year old in November,
and also 20 countries will join in near future. The Center of the
Strategic Research of the League studies the level of the conflicts,
the probability of the technogenic catastrophes in different countries
and sends relevant letters to the governments of those countries,
warning about necessity of defence of human dignity and security. The
League also takes measures on preventing the consequences of the
conflicts and catastrophes.
Mr. Tigran Torosyan, President of the National Assembly, welcomed
the establishment of the National League for the Defence of Human
Dignity and Security in Armenia, highlighting the right of dignity
and protection of a person and expressed readiness to assist in the
activity of the National League as well as the International League.
Mr. Tigran Torosyan noted that, unfortunately, the human dignity
is not always highly evaluated in the modern world, however he is
optimistic and ready to promote in overcoming the difficulties.

WHITING WINNERS ARE CHOSEN
By Julie Bosman
New York Times
Oct 26 2006
Five fiction writers, three poets and two playwrights have been
awarded $40,000 each as the winners of the annual Whiting Writers’
Awards for emerging authors.
The awards, which were presented last night at a ceremony in New York,
are given to writers early in their careers who possess exceptional
talent and promise. Past winners have included Jonathan Franzen,
Colson Whitehead, Jorie Graham and Sarah Ruhl.
A long list of prospective winners is selected by an anonymous group
of literary professionals; then a smaller committee of writers,
scholars and editors selects the 10 winners. The Mrs. Giles Whiting
Foundation has given the awards since 1985.
This year, the foundation chose winners from what it said was an
unusually diverse set of backgrounds, whose writing is “reflective of
their heritage and different sensibilities.” Among them are a Navajo
poet, the daughter of an immigrant farm worker, an Armenian-American
novelist, a Chinese-born novelist, a Korean-American poet and the
son of an Irish dairy farmer.
The fiction winners were Charles D’Ambrosio, who is the author of
“The Dead Fish Museum,” a short story collection published in April by
Alfred A. Knopf; Yiyun Li, a native of China whose collection of short
stories, “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” was published by Random
House last year; Micheline Aharonian Marcom, who was born in Saudi
Arabia and now teaches at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., and whose
most recent novel is “The Daydreaming Boy,” published by Riverhead;
Patrick O’Keeffe, who was born in Ireland, and is the author of “The
Hill Road,” a collection of stories published by Viking last year;
and Nina Marie Martínez, the daughter of a Mexican-American farm
worker, and the author of a novel, “¡Caramba!”
from Knopf.
The winners for poetry were Sherwin Bitsui, who grew up in White Cone,
Ariz., on a Navajo reservation and is the author of “Shapeshift,”
a collection of poems from the University of Arizona Press; Tyehimba
Jess, whose first book, “Leadbelly” was published last year by Verse
Press; and Suji Kwock Kim, the author of “Notes >>From the Divided
Country: Poems,” from Louisiana State University Press.
The playwrights honored by the Whiting Foundation are both residents of
New York: Bruce Norris, the author of the play “The Pain and the Itch,”
which just concluded a run at Playwrights Horizons, and Stephen Adly
Guirgis, an actor and playwright whose “Last Days of Judas Iscariot”
and “Our Lady of 121st Street” were among several plays presented by
the LAByrinth Theater Company, of which he is a member.
–Boundary_(ID_e64FcBwfvXnZuZC4tvKqOg)–

A DAY FOR FREE THINKING: TURKS TO CELEBRATE THE REPUBLIC’S INDEPENDENCE WITH A FORUM AND FOOD
News Observer, NC
Oct 26 2006
Photo: The youth folk dance group of the American Turkish Association
of North Carolina will perform at a festive reception that will follow
the panel discussions.
Thomasi McDonald, Staff Writer
The Turkish Republic was established Oct. 29, 1923, and the American
Turkish Association of North Carolina is sponsoring a day of
discussion, food and dance to celebrate the country’s independence.
“October 29th is Turkey’s Fourth of July,” said Buket Aydemir,
secretary of the ATA-NC, which is holding the celebration Sunday at
UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.
The ATA-NC is a nonprofit started in 1987 to promote awareness of
Turkish culture and heritage in the Triangle and across the state.
There are more than 400 Turkish families living in the Triangle.
About 100 Turkish families and others interested in Turkish culture
are expected to gather for this weekend’s anniversary event.
The association has sponsored independence day celebrations since
the group was started, Aydemir said.
“It has been at different locations,” said Aydemir, who has been
with the group 14 years. “We target Turkish Americans and partner
with student organizations at N.C. State and UNC. Of course, it’s
open to everyone.”
The celebration’s theme is “At The Gate: Perspectives on the Republic
of Turkey.” The day’s events at the UNC campus kicks off with a
series of panel discussions on U.S. and Turkish relations, Judaism,
Christianity and Islam, Turkish women and Turkish identity in the
United States.
A reception will follow, featuring “Turkish finger food,” music and
a folk dance performance.
Organizers say the event has several goals: to promote awareness of
Turkey, to address myths and stereotypes and to promote discussion.
The awarding of this year’s Nobel Prize in literature to Turkish
writer Orhan Pamuk has focused attention on Turkey and the ATA-NC,
Aydemir said.
Pamuk attracted international notice last year when lawyers of two
Turkish professional associations brought criminal charges against him
after he told a Swiss newspaper the Turkish government was responsible
for the genocide of 1 million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds between 1915
and 1917. The charges were dropped in January.
“We are getting a lot of interest from high schools and colleges who
want information about the Turkish situation,” Aydemir said.

SPECIAL REPORT: AXIS OF ALLIES
By Christopher Orlet
The American Spectator
Oct 26 2006
Writing last week in the Wall Street Journal Tunku Varadarajan made a
good case that Pakistan’s leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been for
the past five years two-timing the U.S. The general has “played the
Americans beautifully”:
After five years of Pakistani collaboration with the U.S. military in
Afghanistan, not one Taliban leader of consequence has been captured
or killed. Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, cries himself hoarse
over the Taliban functioning out of Pakistan’s western regions and he
is treated with open ridicule by Gen. Musharraf. There is precious
little, however, that George W. Bush can do about this: He cannot
now admit that a man he has called his “ally” for the past five years
has been double-crossing him nearly every minute of that time.
Nor can he admit that there is a “vast nuclear smuggling ring emanating
from Pakistan” (Washington Post), doubtless with Musharraf’s tacit
authorization, with Pakistani weapons finding their way to every
rogue nation that can scrape together a few bucks.
Sadly, the case of Pakistan is not unique. Another so-called ally,
Saudi Arabia, has also been playing the U.S. like one of Antonio
Stradivari’s fiddles. The Saudis have never been big fans of Team
USA. In fact, 87 percent of Saudis hold an unfavorable opinion of
the U.S. And their own leaders aren’t going to win any popularity
contests either. The Saudi royal family is nothing if not a web of
contradictions: an ally of the U.S. in the War on Terror and a main
target of Osama bin Laden, while at the same time an exporter of
radical Wahhabism. In fact, the only thing the Saudis export more of
is oil.
If any Muslim state should be pro-American, it is fellow NATO member
Turkey. A secular, nominally democratic nation, Turkey longs to
modernize and move closer to the West, while paradoxically keeping
Western society at arm’s length. (About three-quarters of Turks favor
EU integration, while a recent Pew Global Attitudes poll showed that
only 16 percent of Turks held a favorable view of Christians, just
one percentage point higher than their dislike of Jews.) Politically,
Turkey is a shambles, a secular government kept that way by a powerful
military that was seriously embarrassed recently when novelist Orhan
Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Politics…errr, Literature, despite
the government’s recent attempts to have him locked up for “insulting
the Republic.” Not long ago Pamuk had the bad taste to bring up the
(1915-17) Armenian genocide. The Nobel laureate deserved some kind
of award, if only because he is hated by both the Islamicists and
the Turkish military, which means he must be doing something right.
As Pamuk’s novels amply demonstrate, there is in his homeland an
intense hate of “Europeanized” Turks, a revulsion that is only kept
from violent outbreak by a thuggish military that routinely uses
torture and the threat of torture to maintain a semblance of order.
The Turkish rural majority is rabidly anti-American. A recent poll
shows that a mere 12 percent of Turks hold a favorable opinion of
the U.S. As for our allies in the capital Ankara, the Turks not only
opposed the War in Iraq, their parliament voted to forbid U.S. troops
from crossing into Iraq from Turkish soil.
EGYPT IS ANOTHER so-called friend who is an ally in name only. An
impressive 98 percent of Egyptians surveyed have an “unfavorable
attitude” toward the U.S., according to a Zogby poll. Perhaps Egyptians
hate the U.S. so much because their military is the second largest
recipient of American foreign aid, which tends to be used to prop up a
double-dealing dictatorship that encourages the spread of anti-American
propaganda (“vicious and loony lies,” according to James Glassman of
the American Enterprise) which tends to feed Muslim extremism.
And thanks to Saudi meddling, Asian Muslim nations are experiencing
an upsurge of anti-Western feeling as Wahhabism replaces the mainly
peaceful, moderate version of Islam long practiced by Asians.
Wahhabism takes its most radical form in terrorist factions like
Islamic Defenders’ Front, Darul Islam, Laskar Jihad, and Jemaah
Islamiah, groups that seem determined to prove to their Arab
co-religionists that they are indeed true Muslims, and who are
responsible for the many terror attacks in Bali and the Philippines.
Jemaah Islamiah, a member of the al Qaeda network, maintains that
it will not cease its terror campaign until a pan-Islamic state,
consisting of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippine
island of Mindanao, is established.
This is especially troubling considering that Indonesia is the
world’s fourth most populous country with the world’s largest
Muslim population. And nowhere do terrorists get off so easily as
in Indonesia. Human Right’s Watch reports that “Abu Bakar Bashir,
believed by many to be the spiritual head of the terrorist organization
Jemaah Islamiyah, was convicted in March 2005 of criminal conspiracy
behind the 2002 Bali bombings. Due to poor conduct of the prosecution,
he was acquitted of the more serious charge of planning a terrorist
attack. He received a sentence of only thirty months, which was
further shortened to twenty-five-and-a-half months in an August 2005
Independence Day sentence reduction.”
The standard response is that these allies should be cut a generous
amount of slack, since they must delicately balance the conflicting
ideals of their Muslim populations and their Western allies, which
must be why they tell Bush and Rice one thing and their Muslim masses
another. This would explain the Musharraf-Bush-Karzai love-in at
the White House last month, while back home in Islamabad the natives
were hearing that the U.S. threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the
Stone Age if Musharraf didn’t cooperate in the War on Terror. Such
two-timing works to the general’s advantage, of course. A recent BBC
poll showed that 88 percent of Pakistanis believe that Musharraf was
pressured to support the War on Terror.
Majority Muslim nations and the West are not natural allies. Most
Muslim countries are undemocratic, or at best illiberal democracies
where separation of church and state and other basic freedoms are
wanting, where Sharia law trumps what’s known as Roman or British
law, where religious police or a thuggish military dispense a unique
brand of primitive justice. More and more Muslims are adopting
an anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-modern desert Islam due
largely to the continuing exportation of Saudi and Egyptian preachers
of hate. We call these countries our allies, but only because
our vocabulary lacks a descriptive noun for such an unpleasant,
but necessary arrangement. Genuine allies share goals, values, an
interest in outcomes — they are those nations you can trust to get
your back. Britain is such an ally, Australia, Canada, Poland too.
Perhaps some industrious young linguist will come up with an
appropriate neologism. Ally isn’t cutting it.
Christopher Orlet is a frequent contributor and runs the Existential
Journalist.
dsp_article.asp?art_id=10540
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

RUSSIAN PRESIDENT PUTIN ACCUSES GEORGIA
By Osman KECECI (JTW)
Journal of Turkish Daily
Oct 26 2006
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Georgian leaders of
seeking to resolve their country’s territorial disputes by force. Mr
Putin told Russian TV viewers that in Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia
region “people are very concerned about the militarisation of
Georgia”. Georgian authorities said Abkhazian separatist forces fired
rockets at Georgian-controlled territory Wednesday while Georgia’s
interior minister was in the vicinity, but injured no one. According
to the Georgian sources, Russian military backs almost all separatist
movement in Georgia. Russia frequently involve in the regional ethnic
and other problems. Armenian forces were supported by Russian Military
against Azerbaijan during the Karabakh War. Russia has ‘solved’
its territorial disputes in Chechenya by force.
Russia has deported hundreds of Georgians amid a bitter diplomatic
row. One of the deportees died last week from an asthma attack at a
Moscow airport while waiting to be deported from Russia. The Georgian
embassy says Tengiz Togonidze, 58, was denied medical attention during
five days of detention despite his requests to see a doctor.
Mr Putin was speaking in a live TV phone-in with Russians nationwide.
The pro-Russian separatist authorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia
want independence from Georgia, but Tbilisi has vowed to reimpose
its rule in the rebel regions.
Mr Putin warned that it would be a big mistake for Georgia to resort
to force. “We cannot allow bloodshed in this region,” he said, though
Russia is being accused by using only military force in Chechnya.
Mr. Putin argued that Russia did not have territorial ambitions in
the Caucasus. Russia has military bases in Georgia and Armenia and
refuses to withdraw its armies from Georgia.
“We’re not trying to increase our territory. We have enough territory,”
Mr. Putin said.
Russian-Georgian relations worsened last month after Tbilisi detained
four Russians whom it said were spies.
Russia responded by cutting transport and postal links with Georgia
and expelled hundreds of Georgians alleged to be living in Russia
illegally. Police also cracked down on Georgian businesses in Moscow.
KOSOVA ISSUE
Russia though support Abkhazian and Ossetian independence in Caucasus,
it is against Kosova’s independence in the Balkans. Mr.
Putin said Russia would be closely watching developments in Kosovo, the
mainly ethnic Albanian province which de facto broke away from Serbia.
Kosovo – still officially part of Serbia – is run by a UN
administration, but a final settlement is being negotiated. Many
observers expect Kosovo to get some form of independence, which might
be an imposed solution.

NEW GRADUATE PROGRAM AIMS TO PRODUCE QUALITY JOURNALISTS
International Journalist’s Network
Oct 26 2006
Aspiring journalists in Armenia now have another option for advanced
study, after the recent launch of a journalism master’s program at
Brusov University in Yerevan.
Brusov is also known as the Yerevan State Linguistic University. The
Dutch NGO Press Now helped the new program along with advice and
financial support.
According to a news release from Press Now, this is the university’s
first master’s program. The goal of the program is to produce quality
journalists who can make independent, fair news coverage more common
in the country.
This is Armenia’s second master’s program in journalism. Yerevan
State University also offers a program supported by the International
Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID).
For more information about the program at Brusov, contact the school’s
Center of Journalism at [email protected], or Albana Shala of
Press Now at [email protected] or telephone +31 20 5682015.
Press Now:
Bruso v:

DOCUMENTARY FEATURING SYSTEM OF A DOWN PREMIERING IN DECEMBER
Blabbermouth.net, NY
Oct 26 2006
Launch Radio Networks reports: A new documentary about the history
of genocide throughout the 20th century, featuring SYSTEM OF A DOWN,
will premiere in Los Angeles on December 8, with the film expanding to
New York and other selected cities in January. Titled “Screamers”, the
film examines why genocides continue to occur, from the 1915 Armenian
extermination to the Holocaust to more recent atrocities in Rwanda
and Darfur. The members of SYSTEM OF A DOWN are all grandchildren
of survivors of the Armenian genocide, during which the Turkish
government slaughtered 1.5 million Armenians. Turkey has denied its
actions despite historical and eyewitness evidence.
“Screamers” was directed by filmmaker Carla Garapedian, who is also an
Armenian-American. SYSTEM OF A DOWN frontman Serj Tankian told Launch
about his and the band’s participation in the project. “I’ve helped
kind of advise Carla as the film started, and I got the band involved,
SYSTEM OF A DOWN involved, and she basically came and shot a number
of our shows and followed the band through our recognition campaign
for the Armenian genocide,” he said. “She’s also interviewed a lot of
activists, scholars, people in the government in different countries –
U.S., Europe, a lot of different countries in Europe.”
The film also features an interview with Tankian’s grandfather,
who is one of the few remaining eyewitnesses of the genocide.
Tankian and drummer John Dolmayan met with members of Congress last
April to lobby for legislation recognizing the genocide. The bill has
been blocked by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, who, according
to Vanity Fair, has received $500,000 in campaign contributions from
the Turkish government to block the vote.
SYSTEM OF A DOWN is currently on an extended hiatus following the
release of its “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize” albums last year and the
touring that followed.
rmouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=6 1037

BAY AREA WRITERS CROWD DAIS
Heidi Benson, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle, CA
Oct 26 2006
Whiting writing honors bestowed on three who couldn’t be more different
in background, approach
At the Morgan Library in New York City on Wednesday night, three Bay
Area writers — Yiyun Li, Micheline Aharonian Marcom and Nina Marie
Martinez — were among 10 authors to receive this year’s Whiting
Writers’ Award, which comes with a $40,000 cash prize.
Since 1985, the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation has given the annual
awards to 10 emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, drama and
poetry. Past winners include August Wilson, Tony Kushner, Cristina
Garcia and William T. Vollmann.
This year’s lineup may indicate a growing interest in writing from
the West Coast. Or it could simply herald some of the best American
fiction writing being done today. Nonetheless, the work of Marcom,
Martinez and Li couldn’t be more different in form, style and subject.
Armenian Lebanese writer Micheline Aharonian Marcom, born in
Saudi Arabia and raised in Los Angeles, speaks of the necessity of
remembering and cites William Faulkner as a powerful influence.
Beijing native Yiyun Li lived through the Tiananmen Square massacre
and came to the States to study medicine before discovering her own
passion for storytelling and a soft spot for Irish literature.
Nina Marie Martinez, who grew up in San Jose, is a high school dropout,
former punk rocker and Marx-quoting single mom whose writing has been
compared to Tom Robbins’.
————————————— —————————————–
Yiyun Li Born in 1972, Yiyun Li grew up during the Chinese Cultural
Revolution, knowing that criticism of the government could mean
imprisonment or death. As a young woman, she witnessed the 1989
massacre of students and other protesters at Tiananmen Square. During
her obligatory army service, her anger and disillusion grew. She left
China at age 31 with a scholarship to study medicine at the University
of Iowa, but the allure of that school’s much-vaunted creative
writing program proved irresistible. She earned her master’s degree
in immunology, then jumped ship to study with Pulitzer Prize-winning
authors James Alan McPherson and Marilynne Robinson at the Iowa
writing program.
“For a long time I felt like I wasted half my adult life,” she says.
“Now, though, I actually think scientific training was very good for
me. I’m a very disciplined writer, and I think I got that from my
science training.”
Like Conrad and Nabokov before her, Li writes fiction in a language
she acquired as an adult. By 2004, her short stories in English were
being published in the New Yorker. That year, she also earned master’s
of fine arts degrees in creative writing and nonfiction.
“There’s a slight distance between me and English. I think it enables
me to come to the language with a little bit different angle from
native speakers,” Li said. “I think it’s really my advantage.”
In 2005, Random House published “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,”
her collection of stories set in China and the United States, to
spectacular reviews. The book won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award,
the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the California
Book Award for first fiction. The Washington Post described her
career trajectory as “so steep it gives her peers vertigo.” And her
pace has not slackened.
Li left Iowa for the Bay Area last summer for a teaching position
at Mills College in Oakland. An assistant professor of English,
she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in fiction writing
and creative nonfiction. The Whiting Award will give her time to write.
“It will allow me to take a half year off from teaching. I’m working
on a novel I can’t wait to finish,” she says. The story is set in
China in 1979, a time she calls “a transition point, post-Cultural
Revolution, the starting moment of a little bit of democracy.”
Her work has drawn comparisons to Chekhov’s tales for their
psychological and moral complexity. “I did read a lot of Russian
literature, in Chinese translation, starting in elementary school,”
she says.
But today, another literature is a more conscious influence. “I’m
pretending to be an Irish writer,” Li says, with a laugh. She considers
William Trevor, the award-winning Irish writer, to be one of her
mentors, though they’ve never met.
“I owe him a debt,” she says. “I still read him every day.” What she
admires most, she says, is Trevor’s elegant language and affection
for his characters. But there is another quality she holds dear,
one she attributes to certain Irish writers.
“They just tell the story,” she says, “from the beginning to the end.”
————————————– ——————————————
Nina Marie Martinez Nina Marie Martinez was born in San
Jose, the daughter of a first-generation Mexican American
prune-picker-turned-building contractor and a German American
stay-at-home mother. A high school dropout, she was a single mom
at 20, supporting herself and her daughter by reselling flea-market
finds. Soon, she was a vintage-clothing maven and decided to go back
to school to study business.
“All I knew was that I needed money, and if you needed money, you
studied business,” she says. But taking general education classes
reminded her of one of her first loves, literature. (The other was
the Giants.)
So she went to UC Santa Cruz to study literature. That’s when she
started hearing voices.
“They weren’t trying to make me do bad things or anything,” she says,
laughing. “These women were having a conversation in my head, and
I started writing it down.” That conversation was the spark for her
debut novel, “Caramba!: A Tale Told in Turns of the Cards,” published
in 2004 by Knopf.
“When I wrote ‘Caramba!’ I felt like I was writing the great American
novel,” she says. “Not too long ago, this was Mexico. My ancestors
roamed these lands for hundreds of centuries.”
The book takes traditional Mexican Loteria cards as pivot points —
and illustrations — for the assemblage of a high-energy plot.
Publishers Weekly described the novel as “an effervescent, luminous
debut.”
She cites Thomas Pynchon and Vladimir Nabokov as two of her literary
influences, particularly while writing “Caramba!” “The funny thing
is, my favorite writers are white males and most of them are dead,”
she says, noting that Latina authors are too often stereotyped. “They
think we’re all sitting in the corner reading ‘One Hundred Years of
Solitude.’ ”
Martinez lives near the Santa Cruz boardwalk with her 16-year-old
daughter and two Chihuahuas and says she will never forget the
professor who said that the most interesting fiction is written by
people who speak more than one language.
“My girlfriends and I have always switched back and forth from Spanish
to English,” Martinez says. “When these two languages intermingle,
they’re both changed. Language is pliant. It can move and shift
without breaking.”
Her next novel, coming out in 2008 from Knopf, is the story of a girl
who survives a difficult childhood and becomes the queen of the flea
market. “When you write a book, there are books that you hold close to
your heart,” she says. Just now, she is reading “Tropic of Cancer” by
Henry Miller and “Down and Out in Paris and London” by George Orwell.
“What does it mean to be down and out, but living artistically?” she
asks. “My new book is dedicated to the discarded, people who’ve been
thrown away. I am drawn to things and people whose peculiarness or
beauty goes unappreciated by the vast majority of society.”
———————————- ———————————————-
Mic heline Aharonian Marcom Not every girl in the San Fernando Valley
grew up hearing Arabic, French and Armenian. Micheline Aharonian
Marcom did and found the sound of these distant tongues, spoken by
family and friends, both fascinating and frustrating.
Because she spoke only English, Marcom recalls, “I felt locked out. I
wanted to know what people were saying.”
Born in Saudi Arabia in 1968, Marcom was raised in Los Angeles. At
17, she went to UC Berkeley, studying comparative literature before
moving to Madrid, where she earned a master’s degree in Spanish
literature. Through her study of languages and literature, she found
a key to her family’s story — and her own.
She has just completed her third novel, “Draining the Sea,” the last
of a chronological trilogy that mirrors the migration of her family
from Armenia to Lebanon to California. The first in the series,
“Three Apples Fell From Heaven” (Riverhead, 2001), was inspired by
the story of her grandmother, who survived the Armenian genocide of
1915 and was resettled in Lebanon.
Turkey has yet to acknowledge that as many as 600,0000 Armenians were
killed between 1915-16. “For Armenians, the fact that the genocide
is denied is another added wound,” she says.
As a child, she visited Beirut, her mother’s home and the “Paris
of the Middle East,” until Lebanon’s devastating civil war in the
1970s prevented further family trips. In 2001, Marcom and her mother
finally returned and were shocked by the destruction they saw. “My
grandparents’ home was gone,” Marcom says. The neighborhood, in west
Beirut, had been entirely razed.
That visit informed the second book in the trilogy, “The Daydreaming
Boy” (Riverhead, 2004), set in Beirut on the eve of the civil war.
The novel was named one of the best books of the year by The Chronicle
and the Los Angeles Times.
Marcom turns to America in the new book — “Draining the Sea”
(Riverhead, 2007) — which she calls “a contemplation of American
history.” Set in Los Angeles in the 1980s, the story follows an
Armenian American man in his obsession with an indigenous Guatemalan
woman who suffered torture during that country’s protracted and bloody
civil war.
America is “a place of non-remembering,” Marcom says.
“There’s a weird feeling that we’re not grounded. We don’t have
a culture of remembering or worshiping the dead, but we come from
cultures that do.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MEHMET YILMAZ: THE LAST THING THE ARMENIANS WANT IS A DEBATE
Hurriyet, Turkey
Oct 26 2006
The Anadolu news agency has reported that the Armenian parliament
has shelved a suggestion to form a commission dealing with genocide
allegations and research. Deputy head of the Armenian parliament,
Vahan Hovanisian, said recently of the unformed commission “It will
only serve the purposes of Turks who wish to deny the reality of the
Armenian genocide.” He then went on to add “The forming of such a
commission would mean that even Armenians didn’t know what happened
in 1915.”
And so, once again, it becomes clear that neither Armenia nor Armenians
in the diaspora actually have any real interest in what really happened
in 1915. There is only one aspect of this all which really concerns
them: officially registering Turks as genocide makers!
This should also highlight for us the fact that our traditional
“let’s leave this subject to the historians” suggestion will never
receive a real answer. The Armenians, after all, are well aware of how
their campaign, which they have carried on for years now, has helped
them. They know well that real debate on research on the subject of
the genocide allegations will only damage their campaign.
Which is why they will never agree to it.
And this, I maintain, should show Turkey which road it should take
from now on: the parallel but opposite road that the Armenians are
taking! We need to start up a public relations campaign which involves
all sorts of historical documents. It should be a campaign which
involves not only the government, but civil society organizations
too. I have been saying and writing this for years, and what I just
don’t understand is whether it is our brains or a lack of money which
is holding us back on such a campaign.
From: Baghdasarian