Publisher's Synopsis
In his long anticipated poetic memoir, internationally acclaimed author and poet David Kherdian continues his poetic reflections, focusing on the city of his youth, Racine, Wisconsin during the 1930's and 40's. The poems and prose explore the bittersweet childhood and adolescence of the now 84-year-old author: a time when the second generation of Armenian-Americans experienced not only the Depression and the war years, but also the anguish of dual identity, deracination, and discrimination. Meanwhile their impoverished parents, mostly peasants from the old country, were going through the trauma of genocide memories and survival in a strange land. The poems and prose of Root River Return spring from an ancient tradition and bear its stain. The poems are filtered through Kherdian's sensibilities that are uniquely Armenian, but welded to an American tongue and the solid background of his Midwestern beginnings. Kherdian addresses his life through these poems, digging beneath the events.
