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Anastasia M.
Ashman
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Jennifer
Eaton Gokmen
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"Expatriates in
Turkey take up the pen to fight prejudice"
-- Agence France
Presse
Click for
more press
"Reminiscent of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's TURKISH EMBASSY LETTERS."
--Sirin Tekeli
"Brilliantly woven, laugh-out-loud funny."
--THE GUIDE ISTANBUL
"Everyone should read this book!"
--SKYTURK TV
"A million dollar job."
-- Nazire Kalkan
"Insightful."
--Tony Wheeler
"A valuable contribution to expatriate literature."
--Patricia Linderman
Click to read
all quotes
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"An instant classic!"
-- A bookstore owner in Istanbul |
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"A shoo-in for Oprah"
-- A reader in Michigan |
See more reader comments...
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EDITORS
FEATURED ON TODAY SHOW
WHERE IN THE
WORLD IS MATT LAUER?'s 9th season show stopped in
Istanbul for day 4 of their tour. Matt interviewed
Anastasia and Jennifer live, asking their expert opinion
on Turkey and Turkish culture. View interview--
ISTANBUL: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.
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PRAISED BY
ACADEMIC JOURNAL
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EDITORS AWARDED
Editors
honored with 2006
Daughters of Ataturk
"Woman of Distinction Award"
along with notable women from four countries.
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THE BOOK
As the Western world struggles to comprehend the paradoxes of
modern Turkey, a country both European and Asian, forward-looking yet rooted in
ancient empire, a new nonfiction anthology promises to reveal its most personal
nuances.
Introducing TALES FROM THE EXPAT HAREM: Foreign Women in
Modern Turkey, edited by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokmen.
This
internationally bestselling, critically-acclaimed collection invites you into the Turkey
that thirty-two women from seven nations know, their experiences spanning the
entire country and the last four decades in true tales of cultural conflict and
discovery.
Humorous and poignant travelogue takes you to weddings and
workplaces, down cobbled Byzantine streets, into boisterous bazaars along the
Silk Road and deep into the feminine powerbases of steamy Ottoman hamam
bathhouses. Subtext illuminates journeys of the soul.
Australian and Central American, North American and British,
Dutch and Pakistani, our narrators demonstrate the evolutions Turkish culture
has shepherded in their lives: assimilation into friendship, neighborhood,
wifehood, and motherhood. From a Bryn Mawr archaeologist at Troy to the
Christian missionary in Istanbul, clothing designers and scholars along the
Aegean and the Mediterranean coastlines, the Peace Corps volunteer in Eastern
Turkey to a journalist at the Iraqi border -- and many others -- our
storytellers are ambitious women, pursuing business ownership and propertyi
Expat Harem's anachronistic title
acknowledges erroneous yet prevalent Western stereotypes about Asia Minor and
the entire Muslim world, while declaring that the writers are akin to foreign
brides of the Seraglio, the 15th century seat of the Ottoman sultanate: wedded
to the culture of the land, embedded in it even, and yet alien nonetheless.
“If a Turkish harem was once a confined coterie of women, a
setting steeped in the feminine culture of its era, this newly coined community
of expatriate women in modern Turkey surely follows in its tradition,” says
Ashman, an essayist from California, whose cultural journalism has appeared
worldwide, from The Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong to The Village Voice
in New York City.
“The Expat Harem serves as a peer-filled network, a source of
foreign female wisdom,” adds co-editor Gokmen, a Michigan-born writer and
twelve-year resident of Turkey. “Delving into the interiors of country and
psyche in a culturally Mediterranean land with a Muslim majority, the women of
our Expat Harem reveal a deep affinity for their adopted country.”
For comments or questions, please
email us.
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