Hyphenated Lives

A young man in his early twenties, Toros lives with his mother and younger sister in south-west Turkey. It is the spring of 1956, and aside from the haunting memories of the previous September, there has been little to disturb the quiet life they have painstakingly built. Yet that illusion of normality fractures when a hospital call draws him back into the shadows his family has long sought to leave behind. Convinced that his long-awaited triumph over his estranged father is finally within reach, Toros embarks on an arduous journey, unaware of the truths that will redefine his life.

A poetic counter-memory text, Hyphenated Lives: Native Diasporas interweaves a constellation of family stories, witness testimonies, diplomatic dispatches, international relief reports, newspaper clippings, and archival photographs to illuminate obscured realities of survival beneath an ideology that has yet to release its grip.

This tale is as much about a fractured survivor family as it is about the making of a nation in the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse and the enduring legacies it left behind.