Interview with Micheline Aharonian Marcom

                                                                   By Vahram Emiyan
                                                                                   16/04/2009

 Micheline Aharonian Marcom was born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1968 to an American father and an Armenian-Lebanese mother. She grew up in Los Angeles, but as a child in the years before the Lebanese civil war, she spent summers in Beirut with her mother’s family. Marcom’s first novel, “Three Apples Fell From Heaven”, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Foundation for first fiction and received Columbia University’s Anahid Literary Award. It was named a Notable Book of the year by The New York Times and one of the best books of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post. She Lives in Northern California where she teaches creative writing at Mills College.

Micheline Aharonian Marcom honored me by granting me the following interview.

Vahram Emiyan: When did you decide to become a writer and why?

 Micheline Aharonian Marcom: I don’t think I decided one day, but it happened over time. In my early 20’s I began writing poetry and then later on, I think I was about 25-26, I decided that I wanted to write prose fiction. It wasn’t a question of why, it was just something I felt I had to do.

 V. Emiyan: What can you say about your book “Three Apples Fell From Heaven”?

 M.A. Marcom: I began writing prose in my mid 20’s and I never thought I would write about the Armenian Genocide particularly or about Armenian questions at all. Then few things happened in my life and I eventually decided that I wanted to write the story of my grandmother, who died in the 80’s in Beirut somewhat tragically, and it was sad and the family and my mom was very close to her and so was I. So, I wanted to know her better and that meant knowing about the genocide better. I decided I was going to write a story just about her and maybe about three generations of Armenian women. Then I started to do research about the Armenian Genocide, because I didn’t know about it except the basic details. As I started doing that I actually went back to school to get a Masters of fine arts in creative writing, and it was there that I started working with people, and started doing a lot of research.

There is a character in the novel based on my grandmother, but it became a different book, and I ended up writing about the two towns that she and my grandfather were from. I guess you would say it became an obsession. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know and then I felt really strongly about it, obviously because of the denial by the nation of Turkey. So there is the denial on the national level and the denial of history in general and I became obsessed with it and felt I had to do it.

In English there is almost nothing about the Armenian Genocide in the world of novels. Of course, there are some history books and then again they are not that much. In terms of novels there wasn’t anything, and I had a teacher who said to me once “if you don’t see the books on the shelves that you want there, you have to write them yourself”. Although I didn’t feel necessarily prepared, I was 29, I was very young and it was my first book, I still felt strongly that I had to do it.  

 V. Emiyan: It has an interesting title which has an Armenian ring to it. Why did you choose that title?

 M.A. Marcom: It was very hard to title this book. It took a very long time and I needed help. I didn’t know what to call it. You know, a title is very important for a book. It kind of holds it a little bid. When I was working on it the title was “The Myth of Genocide”. Everybody hated that. But for me it was so much about how for us, Diaspora Armenians the genocide is this moment in history which has marked us. That’s why we are in the Diaspora, and also there is the denial of the Turkish government and in America when I was growing up nobody knew who the Armenians where.

I didn’t know what to call the book, but in it there are four fables. I read the Armenian fables that I could find translated into English and they all end with “and three apples fell from heaven”. I thought that is an interesting play with what is true what is not true, what is history what is not history. Because if you are an Armenian you know personally and privately that the genocide happened, because you heard the stories, even if in the public world they were saying this did not happen, and at the time there where no nations who had acknowledged the Armenian Genocide. There is this tension between what you know and what you are being told, and I think the title in some ways captures that. Somehow I think its right for that book.

 V. Emiyan: You have done research on the eyewitness accounts of genocide survivors. If you were to single out one of them which one it would be and why?

 M.A. Marcom: There was this man who wrote a memoir at the end of his life. He wrote it in English and it was published in Santa Barbara, California. His name is John Minassian.  The book is called “Many Hills Yet to Climb” and it was the most honest account of the genocide I had ever read. Also as I recall, during the time of the Genocide he was 18-20 years old. Which means, unlike most of the memoirs which I read and were written by people who were 6 to 8 years old children during the Genocide and thus their memories are children’s memories, he was an adult and could see the world through an adults eyes. And of course not many men survived. And it was such an honest book. That was the most important. I also read Darian which was more about the women and what happened to them, which I was also very interested in. So I would say those two.   

 V. Emiyan: I understand you have encountered difficulties in publishing and distributing your books in Turkey. What can you say about that?

 M.A. Marcom: I personally have not encountered difficulties. In the US when you have a book you have an agent and he/she tries to sell your book for you, both at home and abroad. I don’t think my agent even tried to sell my book in Turkey.  But I have a friend of mine who’s a book publisher in the UK and he read the book and loved it and said “this must be published in Turkey”. He doesn’t know the history between the Turks and the Armenians very well, and I said “you can try”. He gave it to a friend of his in Istanbul, who is very progressive, open minded and runs a small publishing house, and he read it. As I remember the story, he really liked it, but said it was not possible to publish that book in Turkey. His personal security would have been jeopardized.

 V. Emiyan: What are your plans for the future?

 M.A. Marcom: I finished the third book in this trilogy about the Armenian Genocide in March 2008. I’ve written three books since then which are not directly related Armenian topics. Although generally I put in an Armenian character for my own pleasure.  I’m working now on a book about a Portuguese woman who lives in the US and has a relationship with an American, but her grandmother is an Armenian.