Essay --

Growing up in an affluent New Jersey neighborhood, Peter Balakian’s house can tell us a lot about his up bringing. Tenafly, New Jersey seems to be a common topic in Balakian’s memoir ‘Black Dog of Fate.’ Not only must we study the house, but also the relationships that are formed within Balakian’s household. His extended family is made up of physicians, merchants, and well-known literary authors. Arguably the biggest presence in Peter’s life was his Grandmother, along with his Mother and Father. One of Peter’s most vivid memories is of his Grandmother. He starts off his memoir with a lengthy description of her and her apartment, as if she were still alive when he wrote it. He describes her apartment as â€Å"mysterious and exotic after the suburban houses of Teaneck† (6). He seems to view her apartment as old fashioned (â€Å"it was a 1940s kitchen with long white cabinets, a white enamel sink, red-speckled linoleum cracking at the seams, and a coiled buzzing fluorescent light on the ceiling† (7)) and different then the houses he is used to in suburbia. Her apartment seems to be laced with Armenian culture compared to his Americanized home back in Teaneck. A tradition or at least custom that seems important to Peter and his life at home is his love for and following of the Yankees. The Yankees were a type of family bonding for Peter, and he even followed them with his Grandmother. â€Å"My grandmother and I followed the Yankees together, and by the time I was ten it had become an ongoing conversation between us. Box scores, averages, pitching rotations, prenogis for the World Series – because there was almost never a series without the Yankees† (12). The Yankees were a symbol of American pride for Peter, â€Å"they were more than a team... ...e. †¦ On either side of our new development were grand nineteenth-century houses and manors set back behind high hedges. †¦ Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century stone Dutch houses still spotted the town and some quite fabulous nineteenth-century estates surrounded our new street† (50). This description of Balkians’s house, as he remembers it, might tell him that his family is becoming more accustomed to the American culture, yet still keeping with their Armenian roots. The move from Teaneck to Tenafly just shows that his family is living the American Dream by finding a city that fits them best and a house that is custom built to their liking. All of a sudden Peter is living in a community where families are larger and dinner is just a race to get done with. It seems as though the move to Tenafly is an immersion into the American lifestyle, even more than Teaneck.