Kickass Women in History: Zabel Yesayan

Zabel Yesayan, a kickass Armenian woman, survived the Armenian Genocide, exile, and WWI, all while reporting on and speaking out about injustice. She was a feminist and a pacifist, as well as a reporter who told the world about the Armenian Genocide and its impact with passion and empathy. She was an unconventional wife and mother who spent long periods away from her family, assisting Armenian refugees and reporting on the many atrocities that she witnessed.

In her lifetime. Zabel wrote ten books as well as articles and essays. Her books discussed the roles of women in Armenian culture, the impact of the Armenian Genocide, and the lives of Armenians in the diaspora. She wrote in French and in Armenian. She usually wrote under her own name, but used a pen name when exposing atrocities became too dangerous. She fought for Armenian sovereignty while also challenging the traditional roles of Armenian women.

Zabel was born in 1878 in Constantinople (the city now known as Istanbul) during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. She published her first poem when she was sixteen. Her father encouraged her to become a writer, and she persevered despite being warned by author Sırpuhi Düsap, a female Armenian novelist, that life as a women and an author would be difficult:

When Ms Düsap heard that I was also about to embark on a literary career, Mrs. Düsap warned me that a crown of thorns rather than a crown of laurels awaited women on this road. In this world of ours it is not tolerated when a woman does well and claims a place for herself. In order to achieve this, it would be necessary for a woman to be far above average and she added: “A man can be a merely average writer but a woman, never!”

Zabel went to Paris, where she studied at the Sorbonne University. There she met a painter named Dickran Yesayan, with whom she had a son and a daughter. She returned to Armenia following the Young Turk Revolution, which promised (but failed to deliver) more rights for Armenians living in the Ottoman empire. She reported on atrocities against Armenians, particularly the Adama Massacres of 1909, which she described in journalistic articles as well as in her book Among the Ruins.

Attacks on Armenians within the Ottoman Empire escalated during WWI, culminating in the Armenian Genocide. Many feel that the Genocide really began on April 24, 1915, when Armenian leaders and intellectuals were arrested and deported or imprisoned. Zabel was the only woman on the list of those selected for exile and prison. She escaped and fled the country. While she interviewed and assisted Armenian refugees in the Caucasus, her son stayed in Constantinople with her mother, and her husband and daughter lived in France. In 1933 she moved to Soviet Armenia with her children, where she stayed until she was arrested in a Stalinist Purge in 1937.

After her arrest she was interrogated and tortured and sentenced to execution. She spent the night prior to her execution writing on the inside of a matchbook, with her own blood and a pin. At the last minute she was spared execution and instead exiled to Siberia. She disappeared, and is presumed to have died in 1943. Her words live on:

Literature is not an ornament, a pleasant pastime, a pretty flower. Literature is a weapon to struggle against injustice.

Here are some websites with more information about this remarkable woman:

Pomegranate Film Festival: Finding Zabel Yesayan

Oxford Feminist Press: Zabel Yesayan

EVN Report: Zabel Yesayan, the Hope for Justice Hidden in a Matchbox

Istabul Kadin Muzesi: Zabel Yesayan

https://www.zabelyesayan.info/2013/