With her debut novel, “Sorry, Bro,” Taleen Voskuni infuses Armenian culture with queer romance.
Armenian American author Taleen Voskuni knows Armenian representation in American literature, film, TV (the Kardashians aside), music, art, or, let’s face it, anywhere is rare. Armenia is a country located across the world in the Caucasus Mountains near Iran, Turkey, and Georgia. Few Americans understand the Armenian American experience and its largely diasporic culture, know anything about Armenian history or the Armenian genocide, or could point out where Armenia is on a map (which has changed tremendously throughout history).
Like any oppressed diasporic population, Armenians simply learned to blend in to wherever they landed in order to survive and thrive. Though homosexuality has been legal in Armenia since 2003, it has historically been very difficult to be both queer and Armenian. Many stay in the closet for fear of social shunning in surrounding countries, and you can easily be killed for being LGBTQ+. This all contributes to why queer Armenian stories are even more of a rarity, which is why Voskuni, a San Francisco resident whose work has been published in Mic, Cal Literature & Arts Magazine, andThe Bold Italic, felt writing about Armenianness and exploring this cultural divide in her debut novel, Sorry, Bro, was essential.
A light, joyful, queer rom-com in the vein of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Sorry, Bro, follows people-pleaser Nareh, an Armenian American local news reporter facing race and gender discrimination at work, as she breaks off her five-year relationship with a white dude and, at the insistence of her mother, dives headfirst into rediscovering her Armenianness to meet a suitable Armenian husband. Lo and behold, it is Erebuni, something of a charming, witchy, female Armenian cultural ambassador, whom she falls in love with instead.
Voskuni recently spoke at length with Shondaland about what inspired her to write Sorry, Bro, what her culture means to her, and what she hopes for in introducing her culture to readers.
VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL: What inspired you to write the book?
TALEEN VOSKUNI: In 2019, I was up here in Northern California riding the Caltrain to work. I heard the voices of these two women speaking to each other, and one woman said, “Can’t we just have one conversation with Armenians without mentioning the Armenian genocide?” The other woman kind of gently course-corrected her. I was so interested in the relationship between these two women and the spark that was there, and also this idea of embracing your Armenian identity. So, the book grew from that little, short conversation in my head. Even though it’s a romantic comedy, I had to include the Armenian genocide in it. It’s just so inextricably tied to who we are. I guess I didn’t really realize I could write about my Armenian experience and write it humorously until recently. So, I tried it, and you know, in this book, I wanted to finally embrace it myself, and Sorry, Bro was born out of that.
Sorry, Bro
Credit: Berkley Books
VMS: In explaining Armenian culture to readers who may know nothing about it, I can see where you can’t really write about it without explaining why it's a diasporic culture. There are so many different aspects to being Armenian in America that are layered and complicated — so many of our ancestors arrived here via the Middle East.
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TV: My mom grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, and then escaped in the 1970s when the civil war was going on there. They were lucky to escape unscathed and came to San Francisco. My grandfather actually was a writer; he was a journalist kind of well known two generations ago. He was the editor of a newspaper, so I actually adopted his pen name. I spell it slightly differently than him. My dad is actually a white American that goes back to the Mayflower, but thanks to my mother, I grew up very Armenian.
VMS: How long did the book take you from conception to finishing your final draft?
TV: I wrote the first draft in four months. Then, I submitted it to this mentorship program, Author Mentor Match. I got paired up with Jesse Q. Sutanto, who wrote Dial A for Aunties, and so she helped me. She’s incredible, just so smart and so generous with her time. She helped me edit it, and that took about a month, then I queried it and got an agent. My agent and I probably edited it for another month, so all told maybe before I got the book deal, it was six months, which is a little fast. There was something about Sorry, Bro — I just had so much fun while writing. It was easy to sit down to write every day.
VMS: Why did you feel that it was so important to write a book about Armenian culture in a mainstream romance?
TV: I realized we needed to share our culture in a very accessible way that hadn’t been done before. A lot of the canon of Armenian literature is very, very serious and heavy — understandably, because there’s been so much tragedy surrounding Armenian history, and there continues to be. I wanted to share our culture in a joyous way, and, honestly, even the joy felt a little subversive to me, the showing of Armenian joy and queer joy. It’s like, “We’re here, you tried to stamp us out, and not only are we here, but we’re thriving.” While I wrote it, it was from July to November 2020, when the 44-days war in Artsakh was happening. That was even more fuel for me. I was like, “Nobody cares about us, and I want them to care because they don’t know us. They don’t know the history — it’s this little part of the faraway region of the world that nobody ever writes about, nobody ever talks about. I felt so powerless while it was happening, but I thought, “Well, there’s one little thing I can do, which is write this book.” Even though it was, for the most part, this happy, joyous story, I wanted people to know there was this deep layer beneath.
We love our culture — most of us, a lot of us — but from what I can see, at the same time, it’s hard if you want to make it in America. One of the easiest ways is to blend in and do whatever it takes to kind of fit in and change your name, all that. So, it’s very hard to preserve identity in the diaspora. I worry about my kids and my kids’ kids and how long people will be speaking Armenian. I’m trying my best, but it is tough. It is. It’s tough to do it.
VMS: With the atrocities happening in Artsakh right now, it’s good timing for it to come out. You wove so much Armenian culture into the text. Did you plot out the inclusion of cultural stuff, or was that intuitive?
TV: I never thought of it, which means it was definitely intuitive. I didn’t outline those parts at all, except for the Armenian genocide subplot. My agent helped me refine it a little bit. As far as what food to include and little insights, it all kind of came to me as I was writing. The main character is a little bit of an outsider to her culture, which is always a little device you can use to explain culture in a book. As she’s embracing it, she’s teaching the audience about it too. She knows a lot, and she’s grown up in it, so I did include what I thought was important. There’s a lot of complexity. This is a rom-com, so this isn’t an academic study of Armenianness, but I was hoping to at least portray how a diasporan Armenian would feel day-to-day. They’re not thinking about the deepest level of Armenian identity, but they experience Armenianness.
VMS: Why was it so important for you to write a queer romance, especially in the context of being Armenian?
TV: It often feels like being queer and being Armenian are two identities that are at odds with one another. So, there’s a problem there, something rich to explore. I have more books in me about queer Armenianness because there is a lot there. Armenians are more, on the whole, a conservative culture, which I do believe is a survival mechanism, honestly, adhering to this “normalness” to preserve identity. I just wanted to say it is possible to be accepted by your family and have your happily ever after. I really wanted there to be a happy book where queer Armenians and closeted Armenians could see themselves and feel comforted. That’s why I wanted to write this.
VMS: Some of that conservatism could be because a lot of diasporan Armenians first settled in countries where being queer outwardly would get you killed, which you mention through Nareh’s mother.
TV: I went based on stories my mother had told me growing up, and how she told me a man and a woman who weren’t married and aren’t close relatives couldn’t even walk down the street in Beirut. Someone would stop and be like, “Who are you? Where are you going?” Then I thought queerness is a whole other level. From the mother’s perspective, I really thought about what she was so scared of. That came in a later edit, where she admitted this deeper fear, where she said she watched them kill queer people and said I’m afraid they’re going to do that to you.
VMS: There’s stuff that goes on in that part of the world that is hard to imagine here in the U.S., but when your parents come from there, they bring their fears with them. Did you set out to write a romantic comedy? Did you know that was the genre that you wanted to play with? Which writers influenced you?
TV: Definitely before she was even my mentor, Jesse Q. Sutanto was definitely an inspiration. This writer, Dahlia Adler — she’s also the creator of LGBTQ Reads. She’s just done so much for the community. She wrote these romances for new adults, college romances. I just loved one of these books so much called Last Will and Testament. Her character was just so messy and made so many poor choices, and I love that! I don’t like when the character is perfect and morally sound. I want them to mess up. She is so good at putting her characters in worse and worse positions, so I was very impressed by her and by that book in particular. She’s a real champion of Sorry, Bro, so I’m very thankful. I also have been very influenced by Leesa Cross-Smith, who is one of the most beautiful writers I’ve come across. She’s not afraid to embrace the girlie, I will say. Her novels are all romance-centered, but they’re literary. I was very struck by her short stories when I was taking a writing class in Iowa. I read everything she writes. In terms of finding my voice, I grew up with a writer named Andrew Shvarts, and he wrote this fantasy series called Royal Bastards. We were high school friends. He’s part of this very talented artistic group. He came out with these books several years ago, and I was so pumped for him and thought, I really want to get a book deal one day! When I read his book, it was the first time it occurred to me that I could write the way I think and speak. We grew up in a similar area, and the way his character spoke, even though it’s fantasy, he injected this Bay Area-ness in it. So, Andrew’s books made me realize I could write the way I want.
VMS: What was the most surprising thing you learned about yourself when writing the novel?
TV: That’s such a good question! One of the things is that I could do it. I could start with an idea and finish the idea. I’m in my late 30s now, and I realize there’s a reason why I didn’t publish earlier. I couldn’t finish; I couldn’t get to the end. I didn’t understand how to do that part. So, knowing now that I’m able to do it just imbued me with this confidence. I was able to write it in four to five months while pregnant too, by the way.
For more queer Armenian storytelling, check out Queer Armenian Library.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.