Many Have Pictures Like This

By: Carey Bagdassarian

Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen

In a gathering of stories, Many Have Pictures Like This chronicles a family’s history and passing, from Armenian villages before WWI to the Armenian Genocide, to Romania, and finally to the United States. Much is fictionalized, all is based on truth, and the author asks the question throughout: What is owed to one’s dead?

Whether walking with his father to a pizzeria or sitting with his mother in an imagined coffee house, whether enjoying his grandmother’s immigrant mac-and-cheese or playing catch with a friend on a hot New York day and encountering his godmother, the author learns what life demanded from his family. “I guess what I’m most interested in,” he says, “what I need to know, is how they continued on with their lives—with their spirits intact to varying degrees—after what they’d endured by the circumstances of their origins and time and place.” His own place as an immigrant and his family’s expectations for him are in the mix. And there’s the necessary acknowledgment that the monsters his family escaped never go away, not even in the New World.

Sometimes serious, sometimes playful, and with lessons learned from salmon and ravens in the author’s attempt to flee his family’s story, this collection is a mythology of a handful of people with experiences not entirely unique in the history of the world, though they were.

©2022 Carey Bagdassarian (P)2022 Spoken Realms

A haunting ride from Romania to Alaska

What's the meaning of life? Carey Bagdassarian-- scientist, artist, craftsman, New York pizza connoisseur-- offers many takes in this haunting, spare, but rich account of his struggle to find meaning through stories of his immigrant family. Perfectly narrated by Steven Jay Cohen. More please!

Captivating!

A MUST listen for anyone who appreciates and treasures ones past, history and simply ones being.
The exceptionaly colorful narration makes the experience real, full of emotions and never boring.

We never leave the past behind

Carey, your ability to so superbly depict your real life struggles all while drawing parallels and explanations based on science never ceases to amaze me. Every one of your stories has touched our hearts, each in their own unique way and we applaud you for choosing to take the often times more difficult life path. This is the choice that isn’t the most obvious at times but is most definitely driven by your true identity.

Your last story I’m certain is a universal theme to many through their life journeys, but never so succinctly depicted as in, “Their Man of Science” ….giving up your father’s dream of a “doctor son” and your grandfather’s (Tata’s) dream of a grandson who uses pens instead of carving tools to make a living.

The parallels drawn through humans, salmons and ravens is uniquely superb!! Hopefully one day we will all learn to live in a more harmonious world, where, everyone will be a shade of
brown, like Tata told you, and one god does not have to die in order for another to survive.

As I continue to listen to your stories over and over again, and feel the nurturing and revealing aspect of you, I can’t help but feel real pride of it’s common humanity that comes from having lived and endured.