Based on the results of an extensive mail questionnaire survey, in-depth interviews, and participant observation of communal gatherings, this book analyzes the individual and collective struggles of Armenian-Americans to perpetuate their Armenian legacy while actively seeking new pathways to the American Dream. This volume shows how men and women of Armenian descent become distanced from their ethnic origins with the passing of generations. Yet assimilation and maintenance of ethnic identity go hand-in-hand. The ascribed, unconscious, compulsive Armenianness of the immigrant generation is transformed into a voluntary, rational, situational Armenianness. The generational change is from being Armenian to feeling Armenian. The Armenian-American community has grown and prospered in this century

Assimilation has been a contentious issues for most immigrant groups in the United States. The host society is assumed to lire immigrants and their descendants away from their ancestral heritage. Yet, in their quest for a "better" life, few immigrants intentionally forsake heir ethnic identity; most try to hold onto their culture by transplanting their traditional institutions and recreating new communities in America. Armenian-Americans are no exception. Armenian-Americans have been generally overlooked by census enumerators, survey analysts, and social scientists because of their small numbers and relative dispersion throughout the United States. They remain a little-studied group that has been called a "hidden minority." Armenian Americans fills this significant gap. Based on the results of an extensive mail questionnaire survey, in-depth interviews, and participant observation of communal gatherings, this book analyzed the individual and collective struggles of Armenian-Americans to perpetuate their Armenian legacy while actively seeking new pathways to the American Dream. This volume shows how men and women of Armenian descent become distanced from their ethnic origins with the passing of generations. Yet assimilation and maintenance of ethnic identity go hand-in-hand. The ascribed, unconscious, compulsive Armenianness of the immigrant generation is transformed into a voluntary, rational, situational Armenianness. The generational change is from being Armenian to feeling Armenian. The Armenian-American community has grown and prospered in this century. Greater tolerance of ethnic differences in the host society, the remarkable social mobility of many Armenian-Americans and the influx of large numbers of new immigrants from the Middle East and Soviet bloc in recent decades have contributed to this development. The future of this community, however, remains precarious as it strives to adjust to the ever changing social, economic, and political conditions affec

Before Rwanda and Bosnia, and before the Holocaust, the first genocide of the twentieth century happened in Turkish Armenia in 1915, when approximately one million people were killed. This volume is an account of the American response to this atrocity. The first part sets up the framework for understanding the genocide: Sir Martin Gilbert, Vahakn Dadrian and Jay Winter provide an analytical setting for nine scholarly essays examining how Americans learned of this catastrophe and how they tried to help its victims. Knowledge and compassion, though, were not enough to stop the killings. A terrible precedent was born in 1915, one which has come to haunt the United States and other Western countries throughout the twentieth century and beyond. To read the essays in this volume is chastening: the dilemmas Americans faced when confronting evil on an unprecedented scale are not very different from the dilemmas we face today.

Although ancestral voices have inspired many Armenian American writers of poetry and fiction in the twentieth century, their expression through drama has been limited. The first of its kind, this anthology is a collection of plays by notable Armenian Americans. Written in English largely by artists of Armenian extraction during the latter part of the twentieth century, the plays reflect the outrage of the Armenian Genocide, the forced transplantation that created the Armenian Diaspora, and the desire to maintain the newly established democratic homeland. Including a range of authors from William Saroyan to more contemporary voices, this anthology represents the writers that have stimulated cutting-edge contemporary drama from the mid-twentieth century to the present. The collection includes farce, comedy, tragicomedy, and tragedy (and sometimes blends of all of these). The plays reflect the shared experiences of Armenian family life in Armenia, Turkey, and America. The themes include the joy of freedom to practice their faith and ethnic customs, the turmoil of acculturation, and the feared loss of identity through assimilation. The editor has provided headnotes for each play and an extensive introduction tracing the history of Armenian American drama in the United States.

Discusses the history, culture, and religion of the Armenians, factors encouraging their emigration, and their acceptance as an ethnic group in North America.

Driven by persecution and poverty from their ancestral lands, thousands of Armenians fled to the New World before World War 1. But their hearts and minds remained in part on the Old World with their persecuted countrymen in Turkey and their aspirations for a free Armenia. This first comprehensive study of the Armenian American community examines the rich background, the patterns of migration and settlement in the New World, the complex economic and social adjustments, the family life, and the religious and political institutions of the newcomers. The author shows that the experience of the Armenians differed from that of other contemporary immigrant groups from Southern and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean in two critical respects: they were rapidly successful in business and agriculture in the first generation, and they were tormented by their history and politics. Of particular interest is his trenchant, detailed analysis of the Armenian revolutionary parties in the United States: their formation and structure, their fund raising and propaganda activities, and their resort to terrorism. Lucidly written, this study is an important account of the Armenian American community, which is today the largest Armenian community outside Soviet Armenia.