By Margaret Bedrosian

This pioneering interdisciplinary study examines the continuing effect of Armenian history on Armenian-American writing. Using the work of ten Armenian-American poets and fiction and non-fiction writers, she shows the continuing impact on Armenian Americans of cultural symbols, myths, and attitudes carried over from the Old World, and explores the ways in which two cultures meet, conflict, and become integrated in the imagination.

Through analysis of writers' actual or fictionalized experience, this work provides an understanding of the Armenians' specific concerns as Armenians and as immigrants, the effect of their self-awareness as Armenians on the adaptation to America, the typical and stereotypical situations and personalities that emerged with time, and the key values and beliefs that endured even as names were changed and assimilation blurred physical and social demeanor. Bedrosian also explores the directions Armenian-American writers have taken in portraying group history and the nature of their self-discovery as Armenian Americans.

Bedrosian is a lecturer of comparative literature at the University of California at Davis.

225 pages, hard cover

ISBN# 0814323391