Taleen Voskuni’s Lavash at First Sight (2024) is a funny and lighthearted sapphic romance about two Armenian-American women roped into promoting their respective Armenian food companies at a food-packing conference in Chicago offering a chance to win a Super Bowl advertisement slot. The two are just hitting it off when the parents of one recognize the other as a member of a rival family whose food company espouses culturally antithetical views to their own. However, while they are forced to compete by their parents, Nazeli and Vanya can’t keep their feelings from heating up.
Historical Context and the Armenian Diaspora
While Lavash at First Sight is first and foremost a romantic comedy, Voskuni uses the genre as an opportunity to introduce her primarily American audience to Armenian culture and history.
The two women, Nazeli Gregorian and Vanya Simonian, live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where there is a large Armenian diaspora. They speak the Western Armenian dialect, which is from formerly ethnically Armenian lands ruled for centuries by the Ottoman Empire. That Armenian population under the Ottomans was decimated in the Armenian Genocide from 1915-1923. Between about 700 thousand and 1.2 million Armenians died, hundreds of thousands emigrated as refugees, and most of those who stayed were forced to convert to Islam, losing a core element of their identity as Orthodox Christians.
Many refugees fled to Lebanon where a vibrant ethnically Armenian population had existed for centuries. Most settled in Beirut and Bourj Hammoud, a suburb east of the capital. In Lavash, Vanya’s family comes from Bourj Hammoud.
Another large Armenian community existed further north along the Mediterranean coast in a city long known as Alexandretta. That community was formed in the High Middle Ages by Armenians fleeing Seljuk invasions. That area on the coast eventually became the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. When Türkiye, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, annexed Alexandretta from Lebanon in 1934, the Armenian community felt forced to flee again. Those Armenians largely settled the town of Anjar, Lebanon, where Nazeli and her family are from in Lavash.
The Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990 caused about a million people to emigrate from Lebanon. A large majority of the Armenian-Lebanese emigrés, including the families of our heroines, settled in Los Angeles, California and the San Francisco Bay Area.
While Voskuni does not go into this historical detail in her novel, the history is constantly in the background. She notes some of the cultural distinctions Nazeli and Vanya share as a part of the Armenian diaspora. Both speak Western Armenian, which has grammatical and phonetic differences from Eastern Armenian, the dialect prevalent in modern Armenia. For example, when greeting one another the characters use “Parev” rather than “Barev” to say hello. Vanya also cites the need to preserve the Western Armenian dialect when she shares with Nazeli her dream of writing bilingual children’s books in her native language and English to help children of the diaspora connect to their culture. As Western Armenian is spoken mainly by diasporic communities it is at risk of extinction as communities assimilate to their host countries’ language and culture.
Despite their similarities, Nazeli’s parents make a point of distinguishing themselves from their rivals, the Simonians. Her mother comments that the Simonians are “stuck up” urbanites from Beirut. On the other hand, Nora and Toros Simonian, are portrayed as wealthier and more cosmopolitan than their competitors, who hail from the small town of Anjar.
Armenian Cuisine
Armenian cuisine is the star of Lavash at First Sight. Armenian cuisine, with a rich palate of flavors and ingredients, is another important pillar of Armenian culture and identity.
From the titular lavash to manti, dolma, lebneh, khorovats, and more, Lavash at First Sight introduces an impressive spread to readers. Lebneh, a strained yogurt cheese popular throughout the South Caucasus and Western Eurasia (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkiye, and Iran), is repeatedly made and used in recipes by the Gregorians and Simonians. The Super Bowl advertisement competition the families participate in is broken up into smaller competitions. During one of the challenges, the Gregorians compete by fashioning a Mediterranean style pizza out of lavash, a flat bread so integral to Armenian culture it was included in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2014.
During another challenge, Nazeli’s mother insists on making manti to really impress the judges – and succeeds in drawing one judge in particular to their side. Manti are Armenian dumplings most popular amongst Western Armenians. They are typically stuffed with beef or pork, molded into an open faced canoe-shape, and baked until crispy. There are also sulu manti, which are completely enclosed dumplings cooked and served in broth. Like most very old, culturally-important dishes, manti have many variations. They also appear in other Eurasian cuisines.
One of the foremost reasons for the rivalry between the Gregorians and Simonians are their different takes on Armenian food. Notable even in their company names, “Hagop’s Fine Armenian Foods” versus “ The Green Falafel,” both wish to introduce Armenian cuisine to Americans but do so by different means. Sensitive to the loss of culture, the Gregorians fear any westernization of their food. On the other hand, the Simonians believe in the “melting pot” and see their healthy, modern versions of Armenian delicacies as a bridge between cultures. Nazeli and Vanya seek a compromise between their parents and their cultural views.
Religion and LGBTQ Rights in Armenia
Religion is another important component of Armenian culture and identity that plays a constant role in Lavash at First Sight.
In 301 AD Armenia became the first Christian state. Christianity has long been the predominant religion in the country, with about 97.5% of the population today identifying as Armenian Apostolic Christian according to the 2022 census.
Nazeli and Vanya are both Christian, and their families are both active in their local Armenian Apostolic churches. Vanya even mentions a pilgrimage she took to Armenia where she visited several of the country’s many monasteries.
Armenian society tends to be culturally conservative and homosexuality remains a taboo topic. Nazeli identifies as bisexual and tells Vanya that she only came out to her parents because her former partner was so eager to meet them. When they found out her orientation, they were distraught, immediately projecting their religious views on the matter. However, after a few days and long conversations with their daughter, her parents realized that their love for her was stronger than their religious beliefs. They resigned themselves to the fact of her sexuality.
Vanya’s parents on the other hand had a much more indifferent reaction. Vanya tells Nazeli that her mom was very cautious around the conversation, unsure of how to respond, while her father did not seem to mind so long as he didn’t hear the details. She reflects that while their reaction was not heartwarming it went far better than some of her friends’ experiences.
Sharing their coming out stories with one another, the women reflect on how lucky they are to have parents that ultimately put their love for their children above dogma. While Nazeli and Vanya both fear discomfort from their parents, it seems that, in the end, all of the parents care less about the gender of their child’s love interest and far more about the family she comes from.
Conclusion
Voskuni dedicates her novel “to queer Armenians everywhere,” recognizing in those few words the representation her romantic comedy gives to both queer Armenians and the Armenian diaspora as a whole. While Lavash at First Sight is by no means a complete overview of Armenian culture, it does provide a great introduction that should spark interest in an audience likely to be unfamiliar with it. Readers will enjoy a fast-paced, humorous, and heartfelt love story and leave with an irresistible craving for Armenian food.
Taleen Voskuni is an Armenian-American author of two romance novels: Sorry, Bro (2023) and Lavash at First Sight (2024). She grew up in the Bay Area Armenian diaspora and currently lives in San Francisco where she is a writer and works in tech.
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