There was and there was not, a journey through hate and possibility in Turkey, Armenia

A young Armenian-American goes to Turkey in a “love thine enemy” experiment that becomes a transformative reflection on how we use - and abuse - our personal histories.

Meline Toumani grew up in a close-knit Armenian community in New Jersey where Turkish restaurants were shunned and anything made in Turkey boycotted. Diaspora life revolved around commemorating the 1915 genocide of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish government, a history Turkey still works hard to cover up and minimize.

Frustrated by the all-consuming nature of her community's quest for genocide recognition, Toumani decided to do the unthinkable: pick up and move to Istanbul. Instead of demonizing Turks, she set out to understand  them, finding her way over four years into a series of extraordinary conversations that were taboo and sometimes illegal. There Was and There Was Not offers a vivid picture of Turkish society in the throes of change, and an intimate portrait of a writer coming to terms with the issues that drove her halfway across the world.

Told with eloquence and power, Toumani's far-reaching quest probes universal questions: how to belong to a community without conforming to it, how to acknowledge a tragedy without exploiting it, and, most important, how to remember a genocide without perpetuating the kind of hatred that gave rise to it in the first place.