Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey (Seal Women's Travel) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1580051553 ISBN 13: 9781580051552

Publisher: Seal Press, 2006

Synopsis

As the Western world struggles to comprehend the paradoxes of modern Turkey, Tales from the Expat Harem reveals its most personal nuances. This illuminating anthology provides a window into the country from the perspective of thirty-two expatriates from seven different nations artists, entrepreneurs, Peace Corps volunteers, archaeologists, missionaries, and others who established lives in Turkey for work, love, or adventure. Through narrative essays covering the last four decades, these diverse women unveil the mystique of the Orient,” describe religious conflict, embrace cultural discovery, and maneuver familial traditions, customs, and responsibilities. Poignant, humorous, and transcendent, the essays take readers to weddings and workplaces, down cobbled Byzantine streets, into boisterous bazaars along the Silk Road, and deep into the feminine stronghold of steamy Ottoman bathhouses. The outcome is a stunning collection of voices from women suspended between two homes as they redefine their identities and reshape their worldviews.

About this title

About the Author:

Anastasia M. Ashman is a career essayist specializing in personal tales of cultural adventure. She has spent ten years working for literary agents and producers of film, television, and Broadway theater

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Excerpt from Introduction

If there were ever a place tailor-made to play host to wanderers, travelers and those pursuing lives outside their original territory, surely Turkey is that place. The perpetual evolution that travel and cultural assimilation visits upon the foreign born women in this collection echoes the continuous transformation that envelops the entire country. Threshold to worlds East or West depending on which way one faces, Turkey is itself a unique metaphor for transition. Forming a geographic bridge between the continents of Europe and Asia and a philosophical link between the spheres of Occident and Orient, Turkey is neither one of the places it connects. Similarly, foreign women on Turkish soil are neither what nor who they used to be, yet not fully transformed by their brush with Turkey. Our Expat Harem women are on the brink of reclassifying themselves, challenged to redefine their lives, to rethink their definitions of spirituality, femininity, sensuality and self. Aligned in their ever-shifting contexts, both Turkey and the expatriate share a bond of constant metamorphosis.

Delirious with influenza, a friendless Australian realizes the value of misafir perverlik, traditional Turkish hospitality, when she’s rescued from her freezing rental by unknown Anatolian neighbors bearing food and medicinal tea; a pregnant and introverted Irishwoman faces the challenge of finding her place in a large Black Sea family; a Peace Corps volunteer in remote Eastern Turkey realizes how the taboos of her own culture color her perceptions; and a liberated New York single questions the gallant rules of engagement on the Istanbul dating scene, wondering whether being treated like a lady makes her less a feminist.

These are among the Tales from the Expat Harem. The titillating, anachronistic title acknowledges erroneous yet prevalent Western stereotypes about Asia Minor and the entire Muslim world, while also declaring that our storytellers share a common bond with the denizens of a traditional Turkish harem. Much like the imported brides of the Seraglio, Istanbul’s 15th century palatial seat of the Ottoman sultanate, our writers are inextricably wedded to Turkish culture, embedded in it even, yet forever alien.

About this edition

• Publisher: Seal Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1580051553
• ISBN 13: 9781580051552
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 300
• Editor: Ashman Anastasia M, Gökmen Jennifer Eaton