Alexander Street Press Licenses Pilibosian Book

Alexander Street Press, a scholarly publisher of electronic databases, has licensed the book They Called Me Mustafa: Memoir of an Immigrant by Khachadoor and Helene Pilibosian published by Ohan Press. It will be used in their database North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories.

Alexander Street Press, a scholarly publisher of electronic databases available to the academic market by subscription, has just licensed They Called Me Mustafa: Memoir of an Immigrant, second edition, by Khachadoor and Helene Pilibosian and published by Ohan Press in 1999 for North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories. The book will be accompanied by an unpublished letter Khachadoor Pilibosian wrote to the Wall Street Journal protesting America's defense of Turkey in the matter of Armenian rights. The database is intended mainly for large academic libraries and researchers beginning in summer, 2003, Pilibosian's contribution beginning in fall, 2003.

They Called Me Mustafa is Khachadoor's story as an Armenian child in the town of Ichmeh of the province of Kharpert in historic Armenia, caught in the Genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turks in 1915. With no attempt to hide the facts of the cruel and dramatic circumstances, he writes or tells the story of his kidnapping by marauding Kurds, after which he serves Kurdish masters for a few years until the end of World War I when he escapes from those mountains. He finds his father who previously has left for America and become a citizen, then arrives in America as citizen by birth. His early years take him into a number of jobs, notably the Star Market in Watertown, MA, where he works for Stephen P. Mugar, originator of the supermarket chain, until he opens his own store, Huron Spa in Cambridge. His friends include Yenovk Der Hagopian, the singer, Arshile Gorky, famed artist, and Saroukhan, cartoonist, among many others.

The second part of the book consists of an introduction and selected translations from his writings in Armenian. The story is coauthored and edited by Helene Pilibosian and the translations are done by Hagop Sarkissian and Helene Pilibosian. The book is one of a number published by Ohan Press of Watertown, MA, which lists information on its web site at http://home.comcast.net/~hsarkiss. Khachadoor was on the executive committees of the Armenian Democratic Liberal Organization and the Tekeyan Cultural Organization. His daughter Helene was an editor of the Armenian Mirror-Spectator and has published two books of her own poems. Her husband Hagop Sarkissian was also a leader in the ADL and has translated and published two volumes of his father's writings.                                                

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories, a 100,000-page database, provides a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1840 and 1950. Composed of contemporaneous letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives, each unit in the series provides a rich source for scholars in a wide range of disciplines.

The collection presents a broad, detailed, and immediate record of the experience of immigration, supporting research in history, sociology, ethnic studies, womens studies, social sciences and literature. Labor historians will benefit from details describing work in restaurants, meat packing plants, mines, railroads, and factories. Sociologists will find lengthy passages describing immigrant schooling, social life, domestic life, and community rituals. Students of literature will find descriptions of the events that inspired Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser.All aspects of the immigrants lives are covered, beginning with their time in the home country, moving through their journey to America, and covering the remainder of their lives.

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories provides perspectives on North America and on the immigrants countries of origin. There are vivid descriptions of life under the Czar and the various revolutionary governments in Russia; tales of famine and poverty in Ireland; accounts of anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe; stories of persecution and fascism; and detailed descriptions of life in rural communities and towns as well as in major cities, such as London, Berlin, and Moscow.

The collection, under the direction of General Editor Joel Wurl of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, will be particularly useful to researchers, because much of the original material is difficult to find, poorly indexed, and unpublished; most bibliographies of the immigrant focus on secondary research; and few oral histories have been published.

Libraries may purchase perpetual rights with archival copy of the data or annual subscription. Outlines of previous collections may be viewed at www.alexanderstreet.com.

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