Naomi Topalian

Graduate of American University of Beirut, Naomi Topalian (RN ’52) was the author featured on a program organized by the Armenian International Women's Association, New England affiliate, on November 5 in Arlington, Massachusetts. She read passages from her latest book, entitled Breaking the Rock of Tradition—an autobiography that records her life as the child of parents who escaped the Armenian Genocide in Turkey and describes growing up in an Armenian refugee camp in Beirut and later in the Nor Marash Bourj Hammoud neighborhood. It is a straightforward, engrossing account of her life and spirit. It does not, however, contain footnotes, nor is the book in any way accepted scholarship. For accepted, peer-reviewed, scholarship, the reader will need to go elsewhere. Naomi’s books can be ordered by emailing her at ngtopalian @ aol.com.