My Dear Orek
$15.00
Description
My Dear Orek: An Armenian Family History. By Cynthia Motian McGuirl and Kalie McGuirl. 40 pp, staple bound. Free Fruit Press 2023.
My Dear Orek is a collaboration between mother and daughter. Last year, Cynthia got a series of letters from the 1950s translated from Armenian. The letters were saved by her grandmother Rebica, an Armenian Genocide survivor. They are from relatives in Syria and France and provide insight into the scattered aftereffects of the Genocide through one family’s history. When first reading the translated letters, Cynthia and Kalie became obsessed with the mysterious phrase “My Dear Orek” and went down a rabbit hole into family history. The zine includes scans of the original letters side by side with their translations, as well as photos and images of other ephemera.
