Toumani’s ‘There Was and There Was Not’ Not Recommended

Raffi Meneshian

 

Meline Toumani’s “There Was and There Was Not: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in Turkey, Armenia, and Beyond” is arguably one of the more critically acclaimed Armenian Genocide themed books to come along in years. It has been nominated as a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Awards in the category of autobiography and has garnered an impressive array of glowing reviews from publications ranging from The New York Times to The Economist. Having signed with the imprint Metropolitan/Henry Holt/Picador, part of the McMillan family of book publishers, Toumani has major muscle behind promoting the memoir. Her appearances on various radio talk shows, television programs and a recent high profile Op-Ed have had two overtly consistent themes- 1. Armenians need to get over the issue of Armenian Genocide recognition and 2. They have been brought up to indiscriminately hate Turks. Yet, as many strain to recall exactly who Meline Toumani is, her book has been met with some interest, some anger, and a whole lot of blank stares within the Armenian community.

Meline Toumani, the Armenian Genocide and the Politics of Appeasement

Christopher Atamian

 

Meline Toumani's puzzling and sometimes maddening first book There Was and There Was Not: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in Turkey, Armenia and Beyond purports to analyze the hatred still separating Armenians and Turks on the eve of the one hundredth commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. The biggest problem with the exposé lies perhaps in Toumani's underlying assumptions, i.e. that Armenians and Turks all hate each other and in equating victim and perpetrator. Toumani is usually a fluid writer, but here she gets lost in an often muddled and contradictory analysis.