Tales from the expat harem
Subtitle: foreign women on modern Turkey
By: edited by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gökmen.
Contributors: Ashman, Anastasia M.; Gökmen, Jennifer Eaton
Publisher: Seal Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Emeryville, CA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 293
ISBN-13: 9781580051552
Subjects: Women -- Turkey -- 20th century; Visitors, Foreign -- Turkey -- 20th century; Turkey -- Social life and customs -- 20th century; Turkey -- Social conditions -- 20th century
Table of contents: title: Kervansaray; title: Losing my gender at Troy (Maureen Basedow) digging with rural workmen in the 1990s, a Bryn Mawr archaeologist tests the conventional wisdom of gender relations; title: Orienting express (Jennifer Eaton Gökmen) a dispirited and dependent woman re-empowers herself, taking her visiting Midwestern mother on an adventurous cross-country road trip; title: Hello, I love you (Amanda Coffin) in a comedy of errors, a computer specialist in her forties struggles to thwart amorous advances of tireless would-be suitors as she tours eastern Turkey; title: Last stop on the Orient Express; title: The painting or the boy (Eveline Zoutendijk) when a devout employee objects to an Ottoman painting hung in the lobby of a hotel, the Dutch owner has to decipher its mystery and decide a course of action; title: Conversion in Erzurum (Susan Fleming Holm) in the 1960s, a Peace Corps volunteer in remote eastern Turkey weighs her cultural assumptions; title: Regarding female clothing and taboo body parts; title: The beat of a different drummer (Pat Yale) a Briton wishing to avoid a traditional livestock sacrifice as thanks for her new stone home hopes to repair the town's Ramazan drums instead; title: Hamam; title: Coming clean in Kayseri (Wendy Fox) in a steamy 13th century Cappadocian bathhouse a morbidly shy English teacher confronts her self-image; title: Haze (Katherine Belliel) a heart-broken Michigan girl finds closure in Bursa at an ancient Ottoman bath, nurtured by her would-be Turkish sister-in-law; title: The goddess metamorphosis (Karen-Claire Voss) taking part in a raditional bridal bath in 1995, a New Jersey scholar finds aspects of the ancient gddess culture alive and well in a Turkish hamam in central Anatolia; title: Femin-Istanbul (Dana Gonzalez) a public relations professional seeking the cure for an intimate ailment in Istanbul agonizes over assumed cultural taboos; title: Henna'd hands; title: Forever after, for now (Tanala Osayande) a thirty-year-old African-American reviews the rules of engagement of the Turkish dating scene, where rather than playing it cool the men won't stop calling; title: Village bride (Eppie Lunsford) in the 1980s, a young woman from rural Tennessee connects to her Appalachian upbringing while participating in theatrical village weddings in central Turkey; title: A fine kettle of fish (Trici Venola) love and chaos are one in the same for a dramatic Kurd and a mid-life Los Angeleno in Istanbul; title: Tying the knot, Ottoman princess-style (Anastasia M. Ashman) a woman from bohemian California finds marrying into the glitzy Turkish culture, surrounded by paparazzi, is the fulfillment of a forgotten wish; title: Darbuka drumbeat; title: Dancing my way home (Diane Caldwell) a psychoanalyst answers the enticing beat of a Turkish darbuka drum and escapes her rigid, twice-divorced life in Seattle; title: From the hip (Sally Green) a writing instructor compares the synthetic salacious approach to belly dancing in a Colorado recreation center with the spirited communal event she recalls from Turkey; title: Kin, cauldron and kismet; title: The language of family (Ana Carolina Fletes) learning from her polished TV host mother-in-law, a Guatemalan grows into her femininity and her family, speaking Turkish with an unrivalled accent; title: The food factory (Catherine Yiğit) in a women-filled kitchen on the Black Sea coast, a pregnant Irish gelin, or bride, helps prepare a feast to welcome the family's next one; title: Cherry pie (Mahira Afridi-Perese) an affluent Pakistani who never learned to cook defends her American-born Turkish husband's right to bake when a man in the kitchen upsets his family patriarch; title: Water under the bridge (Catherine Salter Bayar) a clothing producer sets boundaries in the Seljuk home she shares with her Kurdish husband, his parents, and his nine siblings; title: Peddler in the bazaar; title: The business of the bazaar (Dena Sukaya) a Seattle retail executive abandons the boardroom for Istanbul's Grand Bazaar; title: Unpacking the pazar arabasi (Valerie Tairan) an American-born naturalized Turkish citizen reconciles the meaning of Turkishness with her own misguided assumptions; title: Salves & soothsayers; title: Ankara's fertile ground (Nancy Lunsford) a doubly pregnant Appalachian artist blooms in a land of fecundity and fortune-telling, where popcorn is magical and village midwives more accurate than sonograms; title: A mother's charms (Maria Yarbrough Orhon) doubtful of shamanistic charms and rituals in her Turkish husband's family, a South Carolina woman nevertheless learns to conduct them on her own; title: Evil eye exorcism (Annie Prior Ozsara) when a series of accidents befall a young couple in Istanbul, Turkish relatives call in their Black Sea matriarch to perform a shamanistic exorcism; title: Homespun hospitality; title: Rescued by village intelligence (Claire Uhr) stricken with influenza, a friendless Australian finds surprise succor with unknown Cappadocian neighbors; title: The headman's pyjamas (Jessica Lutz) village men in a desolate war-torn border town near Iraq in 2002 maintain impeccable standards of civility towards a Dutch journalist who smuggles herself into their lives; title: Hijacked (Kathleen Hamilton Gündoğdu) traveling alone by bus to Konya during a military coup, a young American secretary is unexpectedly detoured; title: Failed missionary (Rhonda Vander Sluis) a Christian evangelist from Iowa is transformed by the compassion of Turkish souls she hopes to save.