April 24, 2024

How to Teach Atom Egoyan’s “Ararat” to Twelfth Graders

by Jen Siraganian

April 24 is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, which reminds the world of the 1.5 million people killed during the 1915 Armenian Genocide. We honor their memory and draw attention to the ongoing and recent geopolitical violence from Azerbaijan that continues to threaten Armenians. In 2023, over 100,000 Armenians were forcibly pushed from Artsakh—Armenian ancestral lands—fleeing ethnic cleansing and violence.   

Writers secure and protect our memory and history. Today, we are highlighting the work of Armenian American poet Jen Siraganian, who is forthcoming in Mizna 24.2, Cinema. Mizna looks forward to publishing work by Armenian writers in upcoming issues, including an unforgettable personal essay on acting auditions and Armenian American histories of racialization by Lori Yeghiayan Friedman and stunning poems by Jen Siraganian, Talin Tahajian, Alan Semerdjian, Arthur Kayzakian, and more. Armenian writers always have a home with Mizna. 

You can extend your support to those recently displaced by visiting AllForArmenians.org. We also encourage you to follow our friends at the International Armenian Literary Alliance for necessary literary programming uplifting this community. 

—Ellina Kevorkian, deputy director,
with George Abraham, executive editor

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How to Teach Atom Egoyan’s “Ararat” to Twelfth Graders

Pause the film. Ask them to Google the Armenian Genocide.

Lazy but keeps my voice from quaking.
A girl in a hoodie looks up from her computer,
why weren’t we taught this in school?

Toss (underhand) key words. Denial. Forgetting. Jailed journalists.

One student asks to be excused,
half-hides his phone in his sleeve. Is he Turkish
or just rejected from Stanford?

Don’t tell them I’m Armenian. 

A colleague told me she recommended a book
about the genocide to her student. She was called
into the headmaster’s office the next day.

Turn the movie back on. 

The boy and his phone haven’t returned.
Maybe he’s texting his mom. Maybe I’ll be fired.
A moth lands on the screen. I swat it away.

Don’t nudge the girl in the hoodie when she falls asleep. 

The boy slips back in the room as a mother
is raped on a horse cart. The camera tilts down.
She is holding her daughter’s hand. 

Mention nothing about this morning, wrapping a towel around my hair, asking the shower-steamed mirror if Turks would take me.

After the credits, a girl comments,
Schindler’s List made me feel more. Another
complains, the Turks were too villainized.  

As they leave class, don’t speak of my grandmother who was raped, or what happened to her mother. Smile, the secrets lodged like seeds in teeth.

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Jen Siraganian, Los Gatos Poet Laureate, has been featured in San Francisco Chronicle, the Mercury News, and NPR’s KALW. Her chapbook Fracture was released in 2014, and her writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Southwest Review, Cream City Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals and anthologies.