Essay --

Growing up in an affluent reinvigorated Jersey neighborhood, ray Balakians house nates declaim us a lot about his up bringing. Tenafly, New Jersey seems to be a common topic in Balakians memoir Black Dog of Fate. Not only must we field of operations the house, but also the relationships that are formed within Balakians household. His protracted family is made up of physicians, merchants, and well-known literary authors. Arguably the biggest presence in Peters life was his Grandmother, along with his Mother and Father.One of Peters most vivid memories is of his Grandmother. He starts off his memoir with a lengthy description of her and her flatcar, as if she were becalm alive when he wrote it. He describes her apartment as mysterious and exotic after the suburban houses of Teaneck (6). He seems to view her apartment as old fashioned (it was a mid-forties kitchen with long white cabinets, a white enamel sink, red-speckled linoleum break 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 impost that seems grave 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. My super Cmother and I followed the Yankees together, and by the time I was ten it had become an ongoing conversation among us. Box scores, averages, pitching rotations, prenogis for the World Series because there was almost neer a series without the Yankees (12). The Yankees were a symbol of American pride for Peter, they were to a greater extent than a team... ...e. On either side of our raw(a) development were grand nineteenth-century houses and manors set back behind high hedges. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century stone Dutch houses still spotted t he town and some quite fabulous nineteenth-century estates surrounded our new street (50). This description of Balkianss house, as he remembers it, might tell him that his family is becoming more accustomed to the American culture, yet still care 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 incoming into the American lifestyle, even more than Teaneck.