Rima Elkouri's novel Manam is a tribute to her grandmother and forgotten women in history
'There is an act of resistance in making these stories exist'
Rima Elkouri's novel Manam is a tribute to her grandmother, a survivor of the 1915 Armenian genocide.
In 2014, Elkouri travelled to her family's ancestral village in southern Turkey to find out about what she says her family would not speak of at home. At the time, the Montreal journalist interviewed some of the few remaining genocide survivors, and then returned home to spend the next five summers writing Manam, her first book, all while asking herself the question: what is the legacy of the granddaughter of Armenian genocide survivors?
Manam is one of five books shortlisted for the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. The $60,000 award recognizes the best in Canadian fiction. The winner will be announced on Nov. 2, 2022.
Elkouri spoke to CBC Books about writing Manam.
Resistance through fiction
"A genocide, the act of killing people and dehumanizing them, is telling them their story is not important and that their life is not important. So there is an act of resistance in making these stories exist.
"The Armenian genocide is still denied by the Turkish state. When I went back to my ancestor's village, there is nothing there. There is no official memory. There's no grave. There's not anything to help you mourn or pay tribute to the people who died. There is something really painful in this denial.
"At the same time, when you talk to people, people know the story. They heard about it from their grandparents. Everybody has a story.
It was impossible to mourn this tragic history properly. My way of doing that was to write fiction.
"There is a difference between the official statement and memory as it lives in hearts and minds. I was able to collect lots of very interesting stories. But at the same time, it was impossible to mourn this tragic history properly. My way of doing that was to write fiction.
"I couldn't convey the emotional aspect of it [through journalism]. The journalist's brain and the fiction writer's brain are two different brains. One aims at the head and the other aims at the heart.
"I had to fire the journalist [in me] and then let the writer come in."
WATCH | Artist Marie Khediguian discusses the importance of telling her family's story:
Understanding legacy
"It's not so much a book about the Armenian genocide. It's more of a book that explores silence, courage, memory, transmission, mourning, pain and hope through the eyes of women. We all have stories of family that we question ourselves about. What is my legacy, exactly? What should I do with the story?
We all have stories of family that we question ourselves about. What is my legacy, exactly? What should I do with the story?
"I mixed my own reflections with Léa's [reflections]. She is a young teacher, someone whose job is to transmit some learning and hope. She wants to know how can she be a teacher in a world that keeps on repeating the same mistakes.
"She sees how the story of her grandmother is very real today because she has a young Syrian refugee in her classroom. It's not an old grandmother's story that nobody can relate to. It's still going on today."
The grandmother of all stories
"Grandmothers' stories are not honoured in the way they should be. The stories about women in the Armenian genocide, or just women in general, are forgotten stories. We don't look at the way women participate [in war and genocide] and the way they see things differently. It's a different way of telling our collective stories.
"During the war and during genocide, life continues and it continues because women are there. Even though there's a war, people keep on living. They fall in love; they cook and deal with the children. War is not just a series of fights with dates and heroes. There are these women on the other side, who are part of this story. They look at it differently, in a more, I would say, intimate way. What happened in the house during a war?
We tend to forget about women's important role, how they are able to keep families together to push the next generation to study and rebuild their lives.
"There's a lot of my grandmother in the book. She didn't describe herself as a feminist but I always thought she was a feminist. She was a very strong, inspiring figure. Very funny at the same time. The fact that she had to change her life completely when she came to Canada to start over again — we tend to dismiss that; and think that it's normal to do all these sacrifices for the generation that follows.
"We tend to forget about women's important role, how they are able to keep families together to push the next generation to study and rebuild their lives."
Rima Elkouri's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
