Love, laughs and genocide
The author of `Sorry, Bro' writes a joyful Armenian LGBTQ romance with a dose of history
Taleen Voskuni was on the Caltrain heading to work in the San Francisco Bay Area when she heard two voices in her head. One was a woman wondering why Armenians couldn’t have a conversation without talking about the genocide; the other, also the voice of a woman, was correcting her.
“I was interested in the dynamic between these two women,” Voskuni recalls on a recent phone call. “There was something interesting there, and the Armenianness played into it, too.”
That conversation in Voskuni’s head led to “Sorry, Bro,” the author’s debut novel, published this year via Berkley Romance. In “Sorry, Bro,” a young journalist gives in to her mother and attends cultural events filled with eligible Armenian bachelors; she is instantly smitten by a woman who is passionate about their shared heritage. Ultimately, the story is a rom-com, but it’s one that delves into Armenian LGBTQ identities.
“The Armenian community is, on the whole, a lot more conservative, and to a certain extent, queer issues are still a taboo,” says Voskuni. “It’s awkward to talk about or it’s hush-hush or outright condemned. That’s the impression I get and what I’ve seen, my lived experience in this community.”
And it’s a story that Voskuni wanted to bring happiness to readers. “There’s enough pain in the Armenian community. I wanted to give us something happy,” she says, “especially for queer Armenians who have to go through perhaps difficult times with their family.”
Voskuni herself grew up in San Francisco’s Armenian community. “It was my entire world, the first 13 years of my life or so,” she says. “I was very immersed in it and then kind of broke away from it once I started high school.”
While in the midst of writing “Sorry, Bro,” news hit that KZV, the Armenian school that Voskuni had attended, was the target of anti-armenian graffiti. “It was so deeply painful and shocking to see something like that,” she recalls. “It’s like someone doing that to your home or to your parents’ home, something that just feels sacred to you.”
At the same time, the nation of Armenia was in the midst of its 44-day war with Azerbaijan over the ethnic Armenian enclave of Artsakh, known as Nagornokarabakh in much of the international community. “That was also very much the impetus for finishing this book,” says Voskuni.
Consequently, “Sorry, Bro” does delve into Armenian culture and history. “In the book, there is so much Armenian history,” says Voskuni. “Granted, it’s a beginner’s course. It’s not a deep analysis of Armenian history. It’s a rom-com. But it does go into a lot of the main points. For many people, that’s all they need or want to know. Many other people, hopefully, will go through and learn.”
That means writing about the 1915 Armenian genocide as well, which is, perhaps, a bit unusual for a rom-com. In one scene in “Sorry, Bro,” an event is disrupted by a genocide denier.
“I know that was a heavy scene to include in a rom-com, but I just had to, especially because this happened to me when
I was at Berkeley,” says Voskuni, who had been a board member for the school’s Armenian Student Association and was on hand at an event where, she recalls, deniers interrupted and accused Armenians of lying about the events. “I was just floored,” she says. “I had never seen something like this and it really made me question what reality was and how realities can be so different for different people.”
Voskuni adds, “It happened to my sister, too. My sister went to Stanford and it happened at one of the lectures she was at. It’s so commonplace that I needed to put it in there. There are still deniers all the time that will not even allow us to have an educational event. They will do what they can to crash it.”
The exploration of Armenian identity in “Sorry, Bro” is particularly poignant now, given the growing humanitarian crisis in Artsakh, which has been under a blockade all winter. Voskuni says she “desperately” hopes her work — she has another “Sapphic Armenian rom-com” set for release next year — will help raise more awareness about Armenians and become more invested in the issues that are impacting them. But she also understands that books alone won’t reach the widest audience.
“I think one of these, to be honest, probably needs to be made into a movie … or a TV show to really reach that wide audience and have people care and for them to see the humanity and watch some of the history unfolding for them,” she says.
“I’m hopeful. I’m going to keep going,” says Voskuni. “I have a lot more stories. Not just the next rom-com, but I have other ones that I will be drafting.”
“There’s enough pain in the Armenian community. I wanted to give us something happy, especially for queer Armenians who have to go through perhaps difficult times with their family.”
— Author Taleen Voskuni