Since I started reading Arlene Voski Avakian’s Lion Woman’s Legacy, I have been wondering why such a title and how it is thematically connected. I inferred at the beginning that perhaps the lion woman is referred to Avakian herself, but I was surprised to discover that it actually refers to Avakian’s grandmother, Elmas Tutuian, who survived the 1915 genocide of the Armenians by the Turks and emigrated to the United States with her children. At a juncture in life when Avakian had broken free from her heterosexual marriage and was living life simultaneously as a single mother to two children and a lesbian, she had often been unable to reconcile with the hypocrisies and discrepancies of her colleagues, fellow faculty members and other women in the academia, who despite the consciousness of the thriving Women’s Movement chose not to develop and/or re structure curriculum to include books written by women. In such situations, she never held back her opinions for fear of rejection or losing her teaching jobs but vocalized them with exigence. An era of Civil Rights Movement, the 1960s United States was eye witnessing radical thoughts and perspectives of African American leaders who were advocating Black inclusion into mainstream US American society. Although raised in a family where blacks were considered inferior, Avakian had not only befriended an African American man but also considered a romantic liaison with the same. In yet another context, Avakian was infuriated at this comment: “…Orwell was a real writer and that Baldwin was a sociologist…Baldwin was black and wrote about blacks. He was, therefore, not a real writer” (p. 146). I sensed Avakian’s rebelliousness not just against the prejudices against African Americans but also against sexism towards women. Considering the time and context of Avakian’s North America, her defiance, outspokenness, and eventual coming out is partly because of the influence of her timeand partly because of the lion woman’s genes she has inherited. She is a feminist but refuses to see women as victims because she believes women can do what they want: “I was not a total victim. I could act. I could change my life. I did have responsibility for my actions…” (p. 266). It’s when Avakian was deliberating on these thoughts that she remembered from childhood a somewhat partially told and half-remembered story of her grandmother’s journey across the Atlantic from Istanbul after being exiled off of Armenia. She decides to document her grandmother’s story because her grandmother chose not to stay a victim. Avakian consequently dedicates the entire chapter 21 to transcribing the story word by word as they came out of 89-year-old Elmas Tutuian’s memory. The Turks had invaded Armenia and took hostage several Armenian civilians including Tutuian’s husband and oldest son, Ashot. To prevent from being exiled off of Armenia, Elmas was asked to convert to Islam and become a Turk which she vehemently refused: “I told them, if my husband heard I became a Turk, he would go to his grave. …I told them what my nationality is – I’ll be the same” (p. 267). Elmas’s perseverance to remain an Armenian, however, did not sustain for long and she had to eventually “formally renounce her Armenian ancestry and become a Turk” to save her family from Turkish persecution. Elmas was sensible and practical to adapt to a situation that was beyond her control; her decision is not that of powerlessness but, as I see it, reflects her foresightedness. So, this memoir is not just a telling and sharing of events that had happened to the family during the Armenian genocide but more importantly is a tapestry of the Avakians’ journey of life in the 20th century North America with the central focus on Avakian herself. The first two chapters were an absolute delight to read: Avakian details the rituals of domestic life with tales of “ritualistic drinking of Turkish coffee” and fortune telling from the sediments left at the bottom of the cups thereafter (p. 12). She talks about the hierarchical relationships among her father and uncles that predominated in their family business of buying and selling Persian rugs. She fondly recollects her weekly errands with her mother to Greek and Jewish bakeries in New York City to buy “fluffy loaves of pideh or rolls…rye or pumpernickel bread” (p. 9). By saying that the first two chapters were delightful readings, I don’t mean the following chapters were dull; the chapters that follow chapter 2 slowly start to focus on Avakian’s life as she begins to consciously dissociate from the gendered existence of Avakian women at home and develop a feminist understanding of the evolving world around her.
Last spring at American University, I took my graduate class on Intercultural Approaches where I learned about Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP). A pedagogy is culturally responsive when students across the spectrum see themselves represented in textbooks and other curricula and teachers teach every student equally and respectfully. The lack of a culturally responsive pedagogy in US American colleges frustrated Avakian’s African American students and she corresponded with that frustration because growing up she too never found Armenian culture (s) represented anywhere in the curricula.
Lion Woman’s Legacy resonated with me at various levels, and it is a valued addition to my bookshelf, and I look forward to reading it again 😊