An Armenian American Honors and Interprets the Genocide

Growing up in New Jersey, Meline Toumani was taught that all Armenians should hate all things Turkish because of the ethnic cleansing that started 100 years ago today. Then, in 2005, she quit her job with the New York Times and moved to Istanbul — an unlikely place for an Armenian-American writer. She wrote a book that was controversial even before it was published, There Was and There Was Not: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in Turkey, Armenia and Beyond. Today — on the hundredth anniversary of the Armenian genocide -- she is in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.