{"id":2895,"date":"2015-08-26T14:51:26","date_gmt":"2015-08-26T19:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calla2.com\/wordpress\/?p=2895"},"modified":"2016-04-18T01:57:57","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T01:57:57","slug":"dance-of-the-banished-bookdragon-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/dance-of-the-banished-bookdragon-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Dance of the Banished BookDragon review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DanceOfTheBanished_HR_RGB1\"This<\/a> review made my day!<\/p>\n

The year is 1913. Zeynap and Ali are teenage\u00a0lovers in Anatolia (once Asia Minor, now modern Turkey) who part with a lingering sense of bitterness: Ali\u2019s impending departure breaks their promise of escaping\u00a0their village together. Feeling betrayed, Zeynap turns away: \u201cI refuse to be your betrothed, never knowing when, or even if, you\u2019ll come back.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ali will not give up hope of reunion: before he leaves, Ali\u00a0presents Zeynap with identical journals: \u201cWhile we are apart, keep this journal for me and I\u2019ll write in the other for you \u2026 That way, we will still be together.\u201d In return, Zeynap places\u00a0her blue evil-eye bead over\u00a0his head, a cherished momentum that has kept her safe since she was a baby. \u201cI\u2019ll always love you, but I will not wait for you,\u201d she adds.<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Great War\u00a0arrives in 1914, further separating the lovers. In Canada, Ali is\u00a0sent to a prison camp for enemy aliens; Canada and Turkey are on opposite sides of the conflagration, and Anatolia is claimed\u00a0by Turkey. At home in Anatolia, Zeynap bears witnesses to the genocide that obliterates\u00a0over a million Armenian lives; her humanity and ingenuity make her an unlikely hero; her journal intended for Ali becomes a historical document of international importance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the story is fictional, \u201cit is based on real historical events,\u201d award-winning Canadian author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch<\/a> writes in her ending \u201cAuthor\u2019s Note.\u201d What happens to the lovers, their families, their homeland, demands\u00a0and\u00a0deserves far more attention. Both Zeynap and Ali are Alevi Kurds, an ethnic minority about which is little known in the West. They are Kurdish, not Turkish; they are not Muslim, they are Alevi, \u201ca 6,000 year-old religion\u00a0that originated in Anatolia. Over the centuries Alevism has incorporated aspects of other religions,\u201d Skrypuch explains.<\/span><\/p>\n

Already the author of five titles \u201cset during the\u00a0Armenian Genocide,\u201d Skrypuch elucidates\u00a0how \u201cin all that writing and research, [she]\u00a0completely missed an outstanding instance of bravery: the rescue of 40,000 Armenians by the Alevi Kurds of the Dersim Mountains.\u201d Five years earlier, Skrypuch learned about a hundred\u00a0\u201cenemy aliens\u201d living in her hometown of Brantford, Ontario, who were rounded up in the middle of the night on false charges, jailed, and sent to prison camps.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThese men were victims of shameful wartime hysteria directed at foreigners, yet they had come to Canada because of its reputation for freedom and tolerance.\u201d Listed as Turkish, the men turned out to be Alevi Kurds.\u00a0And so Skrypuch\u2019s\u00a0Dance<\/em> began.\u00a0The result is an\u00a0eye-opening, significant literary and historical gift to readers, young and old.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This review made my day! The year is 1913. Zeynap and Ali are teenage\u00a0lovers in Anatolia (once Asia Minor, now modern Turkey) who part with a lingering sense of bitterness: Ali\u2019s impending departure breaks their promise of escaping\u00a0their village together. Feeling betrayed, Zeynap turns away: \u201cI refuse to be your betrothed, never knowing when, or … Continue reading “Dance of the Banished BookDragon review”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[168,226],"tags":[219,40,33,220,242,224,243,196,244,245],"class_list":["post-2895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-goodreads-reviews","tag-alevi","tag-armenian","tag-armenian-genocide","tag-dance-of-the-banished","tag-kurd","tag-kurds","tag-muslim","tag-skrypuch","tag-turkish","tag-young-adult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3655,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2895\/revisions\/3655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calla.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}