Dana Mashoian Walrath: The author visits the VIP Lounge
The Boston Globe · Juliet Pennington ·
We caught up with the New York City native to talk about all things travel.
While her latest novel may be about a heavy topic, Dana Mashoian Walrath said that “The Book of Genocides” has an “underlying message of love and hope.” The anthropologist, who is also an award-winning writer and artist, said in a recent phone call from her home in South Burlington, Vt., that visiting the 10 countries where the genocides that are represented in her graphic book occurred (over the course of five centuries) cemented her belief that “we need to really face history in order to heal.” Mashoian Walrath, 66, added that “instead of denying history, I’m elevating it.” The genocide survivor descendant, whose grandparents escaped the massacre of more than 1.2 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire’s Turkish military forces during World War I, said that using graphics (in addition to text) for this novel was “the perfect medium for complex, multilayered storytelling.” The book’s unique interactive design encourages readers to cut pictures on certain pages into thirds and reconfigure the images so they appear different and, she said, “essentially turns the book into a learning tool.” The author of four books and coauthor of a leading anthropology textbook series will discuss her new graphic narrative at Harvard Book Store at 7 p.m. on Nov. 12. Mashoian Walrath is already working on her next book, “Repair,” which, she said, “uses my experience of healing and forgiveness as a descendant of genocide to talk about how we can all find that path forward … because violence and retribution don’t work. We really need to trace out an alternate pathway that can be productive for all of us.” We caught up with the New York City native to talk about all things travel.
If you could travel anywhere right now, where would you go?
With brilliant fall colors sparkling outside my Vermont windows, Armenia with its own glorious autumn — known as “voski ashoon” or “golden fall” — also calls. In Armenia, the season’s magic comes from grapes and figs ripening to absolute perfection, the rituals surrounding their harvest, and crystalline fall weather. The tiny, landlocked mountainous country of Armenia, all that remains of an ancient kingdom that once stretched between the Mediterranean and Black seas, is the closest thing that I have to a homeland. Lying along the ancient Silk Road, hospitality, beauty, and history abound. I visit regularly, have many cousins there, and love watching it become a popular global tourist destination.
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