In Between Two Worlds: An Armenian-American Woman’s Journey Home, clinical psychologist Jemela Macer takes us on a fascinating and deeply reflective familial, cultural, and spiritual journey to reclaim lost parts of her ancient Armenian soul and unite them with her modern American life.
Born the grandchild of four Armenian Genocide survivors long silent about the atrocities they endured, Macer asks, in a series of connected essays: what is passed down unknowingly from one generation to the next? How does transgenerational trauma live within us? And finally, how do we forgive our perpetrators, find healing, and re-integrate lost parts of our soul, and those of our ancestors?
Echoing the journeys of Michael Arlen’s Passage to Ararat, and Peter Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate, Macer takes us from her childhood and young adulthood in Southern California, to the streets of India, Europe, Pakistan, China, South America, and finally, in what she comes to call “The Genocide Tour,” to ancient Western Armenia.
Searching for an inner sense of home and a relationship to her ancestral roots, she ultimately finds them back in Southern California, in the very place where she began.
Macer’s intimate, courageous, and poignant portrayals of her experiences and numinous adventures, told with raw emotion, insight, and a healthy dose of humor, provide us a way forward for our own cultural and spiritual healing.