"This is not just another anthology by expat wives who long to get in print," writes the veteran book author and publisher Jo Parfitt in the Telegraph UK.
"Every essay is spot on, literary and insightful. Grouped into sections, they cover everything from relationships with Turks and non-Turks to the food, the music, the humour and the passion. Be ready to book a flight to Istanbul afterwards."
Thanks, Jo!
I wrote this for the newsletter of the American Women of Istanbul club about the love that brought me to Istanbul (and what keeps me here!) as well as the relationship we all have with the city, and the role of AWI in our lives. Many of you know me as coeditor of the Expat Harem anthology…but perhaps you recognize me for another reason: February marks my fourth blissful year in Istanbul.
From California and the Carolinas, Nova Scotia and New Mexico, I have always sensed that some form of love brought us all to Turkey.
Perhaps it was an attractive career opportunity, or the promising pang of cultural adventure. Or maybe it was your heartfelt devotion to a significant other. All three passions tempted me.
I met my Istanbul-born husband on a blind date in New York. When Burç called to introduce himself our conversation was so intriguing we arranged dinner that very night, even though we both had other plans. Minds had met, agendas were adjusted! After a run-in with a neighbor child I arrived with cherry candy stuck to my skirt. “But you are punctual,” my gentlemanly Turk insisted, “and perfectly charming.”
Later we held hands. Electricity! The kisses, later still, were transporting. Then the next day he was gone: to Istanbul on business. Within the week, on different continents, we threw 30-something discretion to the wind and professed our love.
Something was in the air, or the heavens. Burç happens to mean “zodiac sign” in Turkish, and there was a cosmic explanation for our mesmerizing attraction. A comparison of our natal charts revealed 15 planetary conjunctions, meeting places of inspiration and harmony. “According to the stars, it was just a matter of putting us in each other’s field of gravity,” joked Burç. “And then the laws of physics took care of the rest.”
We married in a fairytale spot (Istanbul, of course!), and later when tech business beckoned him, we moved to the alluring metropolis with its bridges and mosques and vibrant street life. My courtship with the city (and my cherished AWI membership) has spawned wonders, including an exhilarating career in my field of cultural writing and connection to like-minded people locally and beyond. Planning to stay two years, we are now clearly under the sway of Istanbul’s magnetism.
Sound familiar? Istanbul is an irresistible phenomenon for many AWI members. Even if the thought of life in this unknowable Turkish city seems at first a blind date, once you surrender to the enticing field of Istanbul’s gravity you’re quickly stuck on the place.
Happy Valentine’s Day, all you lovers out there!
From the Expat Harem blog:
We were invited to give a presentation at the Marina Yacht Club for the 7th Annual Ladies’ Lunch, organized by and for the local expat population. The area has about 5,000 foreigners in residence.
Despite heavy thunderstorms early that morning, 120 women streamed into the event as rain and clouds gave way to sunshine. During the Buck Finns cocktail hour on the veranda, we signed books until they sold out.
We were thrilled to meet so many of Bodrum’s energetic and enterprising foreign women.
Among them were event organizers Jane Baxter, Christine Davies, Leslie Joy Rhoades, and Priscilla Windsor Brown, whose voluminous rolodexes played a part in the inception of this annual event; Dina Street of Zephyria Yachting; chef Angie Mitchell, whose book Secrets Of The Turkish Kitchen has been known to save cross-cultural marriages; Victoria Boz, an adventurous New Zealander; translator Antonella Culasso who claims to be “the only Italian in Bodrum!”; then there was fiesty Lucy Nazim, a Turkish Cypriot/British repat, who is following a path in neuro-linguistic programming; Duygu Nayir, the owner of seafront cafe Kırmızı; German yoga instructor and writer Monika Munzinger; one of the four Gillians present was inspired to begin writing the book she knows she has in her.
On Turkey's national TV and radio channel TRT2 News with Isil Okan talking about how cultural stereotypes are a two-way street.
Those poor people, what a work out!
Nine thousand miles from home, I tied the knot like a princess when I married my Turkish fiancé in the moonlit gardens of an 18th century Ottoman palace, surrounded by 160 friends and family. My bridal hand in that perfect Istanbul evening was nearly invisible. No intercontinental bridezilla, instead along with my fiancé I had invited loved ones to contribute what they distinctly do best.
When Burç and I became engaged in January 2001, we led busy 30-something lives in New York City and felt that our official union would be meaningful to us no matter what it was, or wasn’t.
We already had what we wanted, each other. Even so, we appreciated the importance the nuptial ritual plays in our wider community and the potential complications of two cultures meeting and melding.
We decided foremost to involve others in the new life we were beginning. How better to achieve this than give them all a chance to shine? Our plan was to abdicate responsibility to family whose enthusiasm and talent eclipsed ours and to relieve others of commitments they might find a burden. We would be guests of honor. We’d show up, dressed and ready to wed. As a professional manager, Burç was comfortable with delegating responsibility. Normally the micromanaging type (high standards, eagle eye ), I recognized a positive result would be best masterminded from afar.
First we needed to choose a location and the major players. Mapping possible guests, my small nuclear family bunches in casual Northern California, extended relatives in Illinois and New York, friends speckle the globe. My fiancé’s large family cluster in Istanbul and his best friends dot the nations around the Mediterranean. We opted for the most family in one place: Istanbul, Turkey.
The weak exchange rate of the Turkish lira to the U.S. dollar ensured our production costs would be a fraction of a comparable American wedding, and my adventurous relatives could learn more about my new family and treat our happy occasion as an affordable summer trip to the legendary capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires.
Burç’s celebratory family was ecstatic at the opportunity to throw a wedding, particularly his decorative mother Ayten (on her dining table the salt is dispensed from a crystal container in the shape of a swan with silver wings). She’d have a lot of help from her five sisters including Muko, a public relations veteran specializing in staging splashy events. Their taste wouldn’t match mine, but aesthetics seemed a fair exchange for the months of responsibilities they would shoulder. The Turkish siblings prepared for an August date.
In California my family launched into exciting travel research by spring while across the Atlantic, the Turks were already celebrating us a couple. Through Burç, news trickled in. Being handed the reins with such confidence led them to think hard about pleasing us and I sensed his family’s growing embrace of our marriage. The historic open-air setting of the Esma Sultan Palace his family chose felt as perfect as if we had selected it ourselves.
A three-storey colonnaded ruin on the Bosphorus Strait, gorgeously renovated by a luxe hotel chain, it was once the private residence of a particularly brainy daughter of a sultan. The waterside venue seemed like both a nod to my intellectual nature and archaeological studies as well as to the roots of my groom’s culture.
The week before the wedding we hosted gatherings in Istanbul hot spots and spent an afternoon reviewing the proceedings.
The Turkish sisters briefed us: parental receiving line, sunset cocktails, civil ceremony, dinner, dancing, cake at midnight. As long as we were happy with the plans, the sisters said, they were happy. It all sounded spectacular. Mother in law Ayten offered last minute choices. Since I hadn’t exhausted my bridely veto, my few verdicts were accepted with grace. Imagining the ungainly hoisting from sea to land I politely rejected arriving by boat, turned down an offer to shop for a veil, and nixed a noisy plan for fireworks. Ayten smiled and agreed, too noisy. Burç and I composed a blanket thank you card to be printed and sent after the wedding in the Turkish fashion -- not a newlywed minute was to be spent composing humorous letters of gratitude for gravy boats!
In another local custom -- an unconventional twist on the destination honeymoon -- ten camera-wielding friends accompanied us to a resort in Southern Turkey for a week of boating on the Aegean, dining and belly dancing under the stars.
Rather than over-exposed snapshots taken by a rushed waiter, their intimate photos are priceless reminders of our ensemble holiday.
At the airport newsstand, Aunt Muko shocked us with a final memento: glossy society magazines featuring spreads on the wedding. Releasing the notion that our wedding served primarily as a vanity vehicle for us, Burç and I saw a chance to blend our families at their best. Reward for the insight was a fete beyond our imagination.
Excerpt from a travel writers interview by Rolf Potts at his Vagabonding site, 2006. View the full interview here. How did you get started traveling?
As a toddler in countercultural Berkeley, CA my favorite pastime was "French Lady", a tea party with Continental accents.
I began traveling even further when I learned to read -- comic books.
Tracking a drug-smuggling ring in Egypt, discovering a meteorite with a Polar research vessel, surviving a plane wreck on an Indonesian island -- this was life!
Tintin's travel tales, and many others after them, remain reference points. Last fall at a museum in Nazca, Peru one long-haired, head-banded Incan mummy stirred a pleasant flashback to "The Seven Crystal Balls", as well as the awe of my twelve-year old self. It's no wonder I pursued a degree in archaeology.
How did you get started writing? AA: In the early '70s I kept a journal on childhood road trips where I recorded preferences for the wildness of Baja's bumpy sand roads and discovering the mother-lode of sand-dollar graveyards in San Felipe to a sedate spin around British Columbia's Lake Victoria and a fur-seal keychain from the gift shop.
During a slew of 20-something media and entertainment jobs I wrote and edited for years, whenever the opportunity presented itself, for a book packager and literary agency in New York, and for television, theatre and film producers in Los Angeles.
What do you consider your first "break" as a writer?
AA: Reviewing Pico Iyer's essay collection Tropical Classical: Essays from Several Directions for the Far Eastern Economic Review in 1997. The newsweekly magazine based in Hong Kong was equivalent to TIME in Asia. I was living in Malaysia and devoting more attention to my writing career, so it was a breakthrough to write for a major publication and huge audience about subjects which mesmerized me.
What is your biggest challenge in the research and writing process?
AA: Calling up facts. Seeing the larger story. Sitting down and doing the writing!
What is your biggest challenge from a business standpoint? Editors? Finances? Promotion?
AA: Publishers and acquisition editors and publicists seem to have narrow expectations for travel literature so for my next book I plan to devote a lot of energy to a detailed marketing plan which will accompany the manuscript in its rounds to publishers. Jennifer and I learned quite a bit about marketing to publishers with Tales from the Expat Harem, which was initially turned down by 10 New York houses who liked it but couldn't fathom its market (Turkey's too limited a subject, they said).
We've since determined that it addresses a multitude of distinct groups beyond the basic cells of travelers, expatriates, women writers and travel writers. In fact, we found enough specific target markets we were able to fill a hundred pages of our marketing plan with actual contacts of potentially interested people and organizations, like Turkish American associations, women's and Middle Eastern studies programs at hundreds of North American universities, and specific Turkophile populations like the alumni of the Peace Corps who served in Turkey.
Jennifer and I also compiled more practical subsidiary audiences for the anthology, like multinational corporations with operations in Turkey, and embassies and tourism organizations which might use the book as a cross-cultural training tool or a promotional vehicle. We were successful enough in our initial efforts in academic marketing that the book is currently used in at least three university courses and is stocked by more than 100 academic and public libraries worldwide.
Have you ever done other work to make ends meet?
AA: Always. Often my most satisfying work has been poorly compensated. I do believe that will change, eventually! Until then I continue to be a proponent of pursuing the work you love rather than the work which pays best.
An essay about a transformational subway ride which I wrote for an obscure website in 2002 not only led me to be quoted in the New York Times and brought me my literary agent, but it also now appears in The Subway Chronicles book published by the site's creator, alongside venerated New York writers like Calvin Trillin, Colson Whitehead and Jonathan Lethem.
What travel authors or books might you recommend and/or have influenced you?
AA: Recently I enjoyed Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz for its mix of historical research, personal experience, and contemporary journalism.
My steamy days in Kuala Lumpur were enriched by reading Somerset Maugham, whose Malayan fiction was entirely believable. A series of historical Asian travelogues and contemporary scholarship released by Oxford-in-Asia jogged my imagination and similarly, now that I am based in Turkey, I'll be turning to the Cultures in Dialogue series at Gorgias Press, which resurrects antique writings about Turkish life by British and American women travelers and refreshes them with contemporary academic analysis.
What advice and/or warnings would you give to someone who is considering going into travel writing?
AA: Advice: Read the bulletin boards at Travelwriters.com. A lot of very fundamental wisdom there about the life and business of travel writing. Warning: Don't post a word at Travelwriters until you've read the boards for a week or two and have a good understanding of what topics have already been covered, and how best to introduce yours.
What is the biggest reward of life as a travel writer?
AA: Sharing my view of the world with others. Adding to the conversation. Having every excuse to adventure.
My review of Romance on the Road: Traveling Women Who Love Foreign Men by Jeannette Belliveau Jeannette Belliveau was a "sex pilgrim" for 12 years and now the 51 year old former erotic adventuress reveals all in this dense volume of travel sex history and how-to cum memoir.
The author got her groove back after a divorce by sleeping with men in Greece, the Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and Brazil. Of French Canadian descent, she is currently married to a younger man of color she fantasizes looks like a 'pharaoh'. In ROMANCE ON THE ROAD she attempts to place her actions into wider context. As an American expatriate living in Turkey, this reviewer senses a motive of authorial self-preservation: to normalize controversial sexual behavior which not only falls outside the bounds of her own culture but severely strains mores at international destinations.
Creating what she calls a geography of sex and love, the newspaperwoman from blue-collar Maryland examines a social phenomenon that may have involved more than 600,000 Western women in the past 25 years: travelers who engage in flings or long term affairs with foreign men, vaulting over cultural boundaries. While intercultural love and marriages are a subtheme, the book's focus is hedonistic sex with virile strangers.
"Travel sex by women is revolutionary," Belliveau declares, a rebellion barred from polite conversation and insufficiently chronicled by social scientists even if its roots are deep in Victorian travel. The Western world might not deem it noteworthy but the buzz is growing in remote Central American fishing villages, sandy strips of West Africa, and the tiniest towns in the Himalayas. The author suggests that today's feminine voyagers are "stumbling into a major life experience without a map."
Does Romance on the Road provide a compass for the heartbroken (or hot-and-bothered) globetrotter looking for a distant cure? It can get a gal started. Prurient interest will be dampened however by the charts, graphs, survey results, and Modern Language Association-style citations of more than 800 bibliographic sources from Henry James' Daisy Miller to a British newspaper feature entitled "My Toyboy Tours". There's a global chronology of the trend, a summary of related books and movies, and basic ethics and etiquette ("remember the man is real, not an actor in your fantasy"; and "do not use him as a sperm donor").
She has done an admirable job of combining veteran intelligence on each locality with a profile of an adventurous Western woman and a timeline of foreign female exploits in the region. Much like the book itself, these geographic chapters are not all fun and games. In Latin America, "sex is a parallel universe of magic" yet gigolos may sport "a breezy attitude toward the truth". A sex pilgrim profiled has a bleak history, found murdered on the side of a Mexican road, "presumably left by a cruel pickup". Clearly an optimist, Belliveau argues that despite obvious risks the lustful practice can be psychologically healing, fulfill a woman's urge for sexual connoisseurship, or address situations like involuntary celibacy.
It can also be a road to discovery. Erotic adventure may not be on the agenda but can be inspired by the act of travel itself. Wandering women have the opportunity to "reclaim pagan freedoms lost since the advent of civilization" Belliveau waxes, since they exist in a liminal zone, a reality unconnected to their usual existence. A traveler may view the people around her as social equals, think of herself as anonymous, feel unburdened by expectations of social propriety, be more playful and suggestive. Novelist Rebecca Brown is quoted discovering her sexuality on a trip abroad: "Like Stein, Toklas, and other women who have traveled away from home, it took leaving my native land to realize I was a lesbian."
Even so, it is difficult to approach Romance on the Road, or know who would, besides social scientists who might wallow in its surfeit of statistics or old hands who will identify with the insider dope, and buoyant we-can-all-get-it-on (and perhaps heal the world by having international children) conclusions. It's hardly pleasure reading nor something to openly peruse on a crowded subway. Some may not want to get caught reading it at all. This reviewer's Turkish husband handed it over saying "You got a trashy book in the mail."
It's unfortunate that Belliveau's concentration on ecstasy abroad overwhelms her scholarship on ethical and economic questions as well as cultural and social ramifications in sex-host cultures. The few harmful consequences she includes are female tourists being perceived as "man-stealers" by native women in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and Africa; the new role of hustler that thousands of foreign men have adopted; and a rise in STDs and incidents of harassment and assault. Soon enough she is making the case for positives like liberated Scandinavian women spurring sexual revolutions for their sisters in Spain, Greece and Mexico.
Belliveau doesn't seem concerned with the cultural factor freespirited sensualists export. Writing from the sex-toured Near East, this reviewer suggests the damaging potential of each disposable liaison is empirical evidence that Western culture is morally corrupt. One forgettable fling has the power to affect systems far larger than the person, family, village or region which witnessed and absorbed the behavior.
The environment of sexual predation many Western women face overseas is also bound to be heightened by the wanton and culturally inappropriate choices of sex pilgrims. Travelers and expatriates striving to modulate their behavior to find social acceptance with native friends, families and colleagues must struggle to differentiate themselves from sexual opportunists who don't have to lie in the messy bed they've made.
Without apology Belliveau admits this detrimental byproduct of her Shirley Valentine amusement (or was it healing?): "At first I was appalled at the smothering level of harassment I encountered in Athens. Then I succumbed to these temptations, with the likelihood that my sex partners became further convinced about the ease of seducing any lone Western female tourists to later cross their paths."
On behalf of thousands of traveling women hoping to explore the world unmolested -- thanks for nothing.
+++
This appeared in Perceptive Travel, July/August 2006
We did this and survived to tell about it! Jennifer Gokmen and I spoke in front of more than 800 people in 10 states, including conferences, festivals, a consulate, bookstores, alumnae clubs, cultural organizations, and a cigar factory (that place smelled the best). See photos of this nutty feat.
EXPAT HAREM EDITORS U.S. BOOK TOUR SPRING 2006
--13 April, New York City, NY, 7:00PM NEW YORK CONSULATE GENERAL OF REPUBLIC OF TURKEY 821 United Nations Plaza
--15 April, Providence, RI, 1:00PM BOOKS ON THE SQUARE Books on the Square 471 Angell St.
--21-22 April 21-22, Buffalo, NY GENDER ACROSS BORDERS II Gender Institute, University at Buffalo
--April 23, Washington, D.C. 1 PM BRYN MAWR CLUB OF WASHINGTON, DC Private residence
--25 April, Washington, DC, 6:30PM CANDIDA WORLD OF BOOKS 1541 14th Street, NW
--26 April, Washington, DC AMERICAN TURKISH ASSOCIATION OF WASHINGTON DC (ATA-DC) Türkevi, Dupont Circle
--28 April, Dayton, OH, 7:00PM BOOKS & CO. 350 East Stroop Road
--30 April, Nashville, TN, 2:00-4:00PM CAO Cigar Factory 6172 Cockrill Bend Circle
--1 May, Tucson, AZ, 7:00PM ANTIGONE BOOKS 411 North 4th Avenue
--2 May, Tempe, AZ TURKISH AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF ARIZONA (TAA-AZ) Private residence
--3 May, Los Angeles, CA, 7:00PM BOOK SOUP 8818 Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood
--5 May, San Diego, CA, 6:30PM TURKISH AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO CHAPTER (TAASC-SD) (open to public) Location TBA
--6 May, Irvine, CA, 2:00PM ORANGE COUNTY TURKISH AMERICAN ASSOCIATION (open to the public) University of California at Irvine
--7 May, Los Angeles, CA TURKISH AMERICAN LADIES LEAGUE (TALL) Private Home, Beverly Hills
--9 May, San Francisco, CA, 7:00PM CODY'S BOOKS 2 Stockton Street
--10 May, Berkeley, CA, 7:30PM BLACK OAK BOOKS 1491 Shattuck Avenue
--15 May, Lake Forest Park, WA, 7:00PM THIRD PLACE BOOKS Lake Forest Park Towne Centre 17171 Bothell Way NE
--16 May, Seattle, WA, 7:00PM WIDE WORLD BOOKS & MAPS 4411 Wallingford Ave. North
--18 May, Ann Arbor, MI, 7:00PM BARNES & NOBLE 3235 Washtenaw Ave.
--19 May, Ann Arbor, MI, 7:00PM BORDER'S 3527 Washtenaw Ave.
--21 May, East Lansing, MI, 2:00PM BARNES & NOBLE 333 E Grand River Ave.
--May 23, New York, NY 7:00 PM BRYN MAWR CLUB OF NORTHERN NEW JERSEY Private residence
--25 May 2006, New York, NY, 6:30PM MOON & STARS PROJECT'S MAYFEST Middle East & Middle Eastern American Center The City University of New York 365 Fifth Avenue
Academic Conferences featuring EXPAT HAREM contributors rather than the editors:
--30, 31 March and 1April, Valdosta, GA CHANGING TIME(S): FEMINISM THEN AND NOW The Southeastern Women's Studies Association (SEWSA) The Women's Studies Program of Valdosta State University
--31 March-1 April, DeKalb, IL 2006 MIDWESTERN CONFERENCE ON LITERATURE, LANGUAGE AND MEDIA (MCLLM) English Department of Northern Illinois University
--24-28 May, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada THE IMMIGRANT AND ARTISTIC LICENCE AICW 2006 Conference University of British Columbia
Davis, California gives us a hint of the future, a future that suggests that small communities can do great things where mega-cities just don’t have a clue. Most definitions of utopia don’t include submitting to grass police. Yet in one northern California hamlet, residents are lining up for the privilege of having their lawns monitored for eco-incorrect sproutings. “They send people around to check for Bermuda grass and they fine you if they see it growing,” admits Paul Teller, a University of California professor and long-time resident at the exclusive communal Village Homes housing scheme in Davis. When asked if this kind of scrub-scrutiny is a small price to pay for being part of a forward-looking community, the philosophy teacher is passionate in the affirmative. “I paid extra to secure a spot here and now I’m never leaving!”
Due to its unique concept, the professor’s vaunted neighborhood—a 240-home, 60-acre development in an agricultural town 16 miles (26 km) outside the state capitol, Sacramento—has been the subject of national and international television documentaries on environmentally sustainable living. Conceived at the height of the unsettling Ford-era gasoline crisis and economic recession and built in 1975, Village Homes attempted to recreate a traditional sense of community while conserving energy and water in the most efficient ways. Solar water heating and passive space heating designs are incorporated into each home. Neighbors share not only the unfenced yards around each home, they also meet in the large village green, entrust their children to a community day care center, hold performances at the village amphitheatre, and relax in the community-run pool.
Yet this environmentally-conscious sanctuary has not built high walls to shut out a cruel world, as the surrounding town of Davis is also dedicated to an excellent quality of life, clean living and sustainability; it was named one of the healthiest U.S. communities in which to live and retire. With an approach combining innovation, education, recreation and social awareness, Davis is brimming with unique community aspects. In addition to its community-built Art Center, more than $200,000-worth of publicly owned objets d’art are exhibited throughout the charming pedestrian-friendly town, for the residents’ strolling pleasure. The numerous cafes are equipped with modems for easy laptop internet access, the morning Farmer’s Market is an institution of fresh produce and down-home cooking, and neighbors volunteer their time to run the Co-op, a popular communal health food and natural supplies market. The wholesome-looking students in the well-tended public school system consistently get the best test scores of the entire region. Down at City Hall, citizen committees advise 30 boards and commissions on issues ranging from natural resource conservation to childcare.
If pioneering California often fulfills the most progressive of its nation’s dreams, then Davis must surely fulfill the most progressive dreams of its state. With its emphasis on recreational opportunities and greenery (including 25 miles [40 km] of greenbelts winding through town), the City’s budget for parks and community services, unusually, exceeds the combined public safety (police and fire) budget. Recognized since 1977 by the National Arbor Day Foundation as a ‘Tree City’, Davis boasts 18,000 trees—from flowering crabapple and apricot, to oaks, eucalyptus and redwood—lining its streets and parks, with species chosen for both drought resistance and their evergreen and flowering aspects.
Meanwhile, wheelchair ramps, audible traffic lights and Braille signs for the seeing-impaired round out the politically-correct public services to aid independent living. As for the impact of 25,000 University students on the relaxed township, resident Colleen Stanturf proclaims, “They’re not a problem, they all ride.” Bicycles, that is. Also known as the bicycle capital of the U.S., Central Valley-bed Davis sports a renowned system of bikeways that cover 40 miles (65 km) of parks, greenbelts and roadway bike-lanes.
Davis’ commitment to utilize non-traditional approaches to solve traditional problems owes a great debt to its world-class university. One of the ten University of California campuses, it was founded as the ‘University Farm’ in 1908 and its focus on life sciences has led to a stellar international reputation in agricultural, biological, biotechnological and environmental sciences. With students and faculty making up nearly half the total population of 62,000, Davis is one of the last ‘college towns’ in California—and its residents boast the highest level of education per capita in the state, ranking second in the nation.
Many of the university’s ground-breaking research programs influence the way the town works. For instance, the city is on the national forefront of multipurpose storm drainage facilities, with its drainage ponds also serving as wildlife habitats. The school researches commercial farming practices it describes as “more sustainable, ecologically sound, economically profitable and socially just”. Meanwhile organic compost material, a staple of clean agricultural practices, that is derived from the collected yard waste of Davis residents, is redistributed free-of-charge by the City “while supplies last”. Roses as large as salad plates were fed off this rarefied city-issue compost.
Davis has been recycling on a city-wide basis since 1970 and now diverts from its landfills a whopping 50% of its waste-stream (including mixed papers, glass, cans, plastics and yard waste). The extensive curbside recycling program, detailed in its publication Garbage Guide (printed on 100% recycled, 100% post-consumer unbleached paper with soy-based ink of course), also accommodates hazardous waste (like car engine oil and batteries), which the city will pick up and safely dispose. Truly putting its money where its mouth is, City Hall places a priority on the purchase of products made with recycled materials as well.
Throughout neighborhoods visited by jackrabbits, woodpeckers, deer, bluejays and hummingbirds, community gardens which protect rare and endangered species are sponsored and maintained by the University and residents alike. In a state beset by drought, native scrub and water-hardy plants are not only encouraged by the authorities, they’re readily available at local nurseries. Private greenhouses can be spotted all over town, along with rainwater cisterns, windmills, solar panels and innovative wildflower rock-gardens.
In an important stewardship, the school administers more than 30 nature reserves that represent the spectrum of California’s ecological biodiversity. A study with the U.S. Department of Energy focuses on the global environment and climate change. The school’s Center for Design Research meanwhile tackles issues of ecologically-appropriate design (including resource and nature conservation) and socially responsible design (that is, environmental design emphasizing user needs and participation). Yet another institute works on improving the scientific basis for making decisions on environmental issues, both natural and human.
With heady stuff like this going on, it’s no wonder even the heavens aren’t beyond Davis’ utopian reproach. In 1999, mayor Julie Partansky’s pet project unanimously passed into a city ordinance: to reduce ‘sky glow’ (otherwise known as light pollution) so residents can see the stars again. From now on, all new outdoor lighting will be shielded and pointed downward. “We needn’t light this place up like an airport,” Partansky declared. “We’re not San Jose, after all,” the mayor added, taking a swipe at the state’s fastest growing, soulless, highway-laced city in the heart of another Valley, the high-tech Silicon one. In the face of continuing expansion San Jose was bidding adieu at that same time to its last remaining fruit orchard, the principle produce of its fertile valley for much of the past century. For agriculturally-based Davis and environs, the march of progress has very different plans.
++++ Variations of this appeared in numerous publications around the world, including New Renaissance, Vol. 11, No. 3 and its website May 15, 2006
Özge Ovun and Yalcin Sert from Voice of America News filmed the event to air on Turkey’s national TGRT TV and Erju Ackman and his partner Goksin Carey filmed a segment to air on Virginia’s Channel 10 (WSLS NBC). Organized by the ever-supportive Didem Muslu of the American-Turkish Association of DC, the event was held at the homebase of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations — the Türkevi (Turkish House), and was attended by ATA-DC president, Pelin Aylangan (who is currently penning a Turkish culinary history and memoir) and secretary, Patsy Jones (whose Fenerbahçe-loving Turkish inlaws are scandalized by her love of the rival football team Beşiktaş!).
Audience members included: Yalçın Sert, director of student portals at the University of Maryland and owner of various forums and web portals; Ralph and Linda, who are currently enrolled in US State Department Turkish language courses for Ralph’s impending posting to the US Embassy in Ankara as an FDA specialist (both Ralph and Linda told us they wished their entire Turkish class would have attended our event); Turks like Ayşe, a Crimean Turk, and Özge’s parents visiting from İzmit; and other daring American gelins, like Jetta Karabulut who has road trip adventures of her own to tell, like a trip from Istanbul to Mersin in 1968 with her two year old in tow!
We were pleased to be joined by journalists, travelers, culture hounds and artists including: Liz Gracon and Danielle Monosson, friends we met in Istanbul during their posting to the U.S. Consulate there; Kay McCarty, whose daughter has worked in Diyarbakir and Mardin, Turkey (a fan of Expat Harem, Kay bought her 9th, 10th, and 11th copies of the book at Candida's!); traveling an hour from Baltimore was Jeannette Belliveau, the author of soon-to-be-released Romance on the Road, a book documenting the controversial 'sex pilgrim' movement which Anastasia reviews (from an opposite stance) in the upcoming July/August issue of Perceptive Travel; Dawn, two-time visitor to Turkey for classes in the art of glasswork at the Cam Ocagi /Glass Furnace (inspired by EH contributor Diane Caldwell, Dawn may soon find herself relocating to Turkey); and Kirin Kalia, an editor at Migration Policy Institute, who brought the Bryn Mawr alumnae count on this tour to 10.
This is the introduction Jennifer Gokmen and I wrote to the book Tales From The Expat Harem:
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.
These are among the Tales from the Expat Harem.
Much like the imported brides of the Seraglio, İstanbul’s 15th century palatial seat of the Ottoman sultanate, our writers are inextricably wedded to Turkish culture, embedded in it even, yet alien nonetheless.
If a harem in the time of the sultans was once a confined community of women, a setting steeped in the feminine culture of its era, then today’s Expat Harem surely follows in its tradition.
Like the insular life in the Seraglio of the past, foreign women in today’s Turkey can often be a self-restricting and isolated coterie, newcomers initially limited in independence and social interaction due to language barriers, cultural naiveté and a resilient ethnocentricity.
Tales from the Expat Harem reveal both the personal cultural prison of the initiate and the peer-filled refuge of those assimilated. Our harem is a source of foreign female wisdom, a metaphoric primer for novices and a refresher for old hands.
Our Scheherazades, modern day counterparts of that historic Arabian Nights harem storyteller, are drawn from a worldwide diaspora of women whose lives have been touched by Turkey.
When our call for stories reached them, through networks of people and computers, we heard from a multitude of expatriates in West Africa to Southeast Asia to America’s Pacific Northwest, all desiring to be counted and to recount their sagas.
By telephone from her home in California, an artist who studied illuminated manuscripts at Topkapı Sarayı was the first to admit the precious affliction she shares with many of her harem sisters: “Turkey gets into your blood. I’m an addict now.”
For months we coaxed diplomats, nurses, chefs and others to explore and express their truths about Turkey in a culturally balanced tone.
Some were not professional writers and some were unable to commit their tale to paper. Of those who did, only a fraction survived the editing process.
But affinities emerged as each woman divulged her internal journey and lasting emotional connection to the place and its people. Systems engineers and hoteliers, missionaries and clothing producers, artists, journalists, and others each share a fierce affection for Turkey.
Revealing what Turkish culture has yielded in their lives, they unspool humorous and poignant adventures at weddings in cobbled Byzantine streets, Ottoman bathhouses, and boisterous bazaars along the Silk Road.
In atmospheric travelogue through a countryside still echoing the old ways, through Giresun and Göreme, they transport us on emotional journeys of assimilation into friendship, neighborhood, wifehood, and motherhood.
Modern women in the real world, they take us along on their quests for national identity, business ownership and property possession.
The country rewards seekers, a veiled place insisting on being uncovered. In the process of discovering Turkey, contemporary women of the Expat Harem unmask themselves as well.
In narratives illuminating imperfect human nature and the fullest possible cultural embrace, our Scheherazades wrestle urges to overly-exoticize the unfamiliar and strive to balance self preservation with the fresh expectations placed on them by Turkish culture.
Some delve deep into interiors of country and psyche, like the shy teacher transformed by the full frontal impact of a 13th century Central Anatolian hamam.
Others teeter on the comic edge of a cultural divide, like the archaeologist who sparks hilarity in the trenches at Troy before language skills supplant vaudevillian pantomime.
A mid-life dancer mincing her way through the alleys of İstanbul’s bohemian Beyoğlu district to the beat of a darbuka drum invokes Mary Oliver’s poetic revelation, one that echoes in every tale from the Expat Harem:
Scroll down for images related to five years of book events...
FIND A COPY You can get this book as a Seal Press paperback through Amazon here
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MEDIA COVERAGE Since 2005 Anastasia Ashman, her coeditor Jennifer Eaton Gokmen and the Expat Harem anthology and contributors have been featured by more than 200 mainstream and independent media sources across the globe in news, travel, literature and culture. Includes New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, International Herald Tribune, NBC TV Today Show, Globe & Mail, Daily Telegraph, National Geographic Traveler, Lonely Planet, Frommer's, Rick Steves' Istanbul, Cosmopolitan (TR), Travel + Leisure (TR), Time Out Istanbul, Mediabistro, Expat Focus, Guardian Abroad and Voice of America Radio. See a list and links here.
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[18 months, 2 expat writers, one feminist travel anthology with three editions. Our first book! A bestseller. How'd we do it? Read the story of making Tales from the Expat Harem]
+"An excellent holiday read." – Lonely Planet Turkey (10th Edition)
+"Beautifully written, thought-provoking and inspiring. Be ready to book a flight to Istanbul afterwards." – Daily Telegraph (UK)
+"Insights from women who learn to read the cultural fine print... Valuable today as an antidote to bigotry, it will serve as an even more valuable corrective to the blinkered historians of tomorrow." – Cornucopia
+“Comic, romantic, and thought-provoking.” – Cosmopolitan (Turkey)
+“Not only aesthetically pleasing but instructive. A great read! Don’t miss it.” – Journal of Middle East Women's Studies
+“Rip-roarer of a guide to understanding Eastern and Western social values.” – The Gulf Today (United Arab Emirates)
+“Charming, warm-hearted and vivid…a definite must-read for everyone pondering the question of what it is we call 'home'.” – NRC Handelsblad (The Netherlands)
This anthology "successfully transcends the cultural stereotypes so deeply-embedded in perceptions of the Eastern harem.” -- from the foreword by Elif Shafak (Turkish editions only) November 2010: Turkey’s most-read author Elif Shafak picks Expat Harem as one of her best five books on Turkey
+Edited by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gökmen
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, this critically-acclaimed collection invites you into the Turkey that thirty-two women from seven nations know.
ASSIMILATION STRUGGLES
Australian and Central American, North American and British, Dutch and Pakistani, our narrators demonstrate the evolutions Turkish culture has shepherded in their lives and the issues raised by assimilation into friendship, neighborhood, wifehood, motherhood.
[Hospitality] 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
[Family] A pregnant and introverted Irishwoman faces the challenge of finding her place in a large Black Sea clan
[Cultural Taboo] A Peace Corps volunteer in remote Eastern Turkey realizes how the taboos of her own culture color her perceptions about modesty and motherhood
[Femininity] 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
AMBITIOUS STORYTELLERS
...from a Bryn Mawr archaeologist at Troy to the Christian missionary in Istanbul, clothing designers and scholars along the Aegean and the Mediterranean coastlines, a journalist at the Iraqi border, Expat Harem's writers revisit their professional assumptions.
SPANS COUNTRY + 40 YEARS
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.
ANACHRONISTIC TITLE = WESTERN STEREOTYPE + KINSHIP
Expat Harem notes the erroneous -- yet prevalent -- Western stereotypes about Asia Minor and the entire Muslim world, while declaring the writers are akin to foreign brides of the Seraglio, the 15th century seat of the Ottoman sultanate:
Expat Harem writers are wedded to the culture of the land, embedded in it, yet alien.
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From the introduction:
Threshold to worlds both East and West, 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.
EXPAT HAREM WOMEN RECLASSIFY THEMSELVES
Foreign women on Turkish soil are neither what nor who they used to be, yet not fully transformed by their brush with Turkey. Aligned in their ever-shifting contexts, both Turkey and the expatriate share a bond of constant metamorphosis.
Expat Harem women are challenged to redefine their lives, definitions of spirituality, femininity, sensuality and self.
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One editor's story behind the book: THE ACCIDENTAL ANTHOLOGIST by Anastasia Ashman
+++++ HAREM GIRLS: THE MAKING OF EXPAT HAREM By ANASTASIA ASHMAN and JENNIFER EATON GÖKMEN
Eighteen months.Two expatriate American writers in Istanbul.We created a feminist travel anthology, landed a North American book deal and dual language editions from Turkey’s strongest publisher, while winning representation at one of New York’s oldest literary agencies.
How did we do it?
THE SHORT ANSWER:
- We recognized our project’s potential.
- We created a compelling brand.
- We requested counsel, material, and support from family, friends, business acquaintances and complete strangers.
- We refused to let doubts impede our trajectory, infecting naysayers with our enthusiasm.
- We shared every success with a growing contact list, sustaining a positive buzz.
- And we hunted unique marketing and publicity opportunities.
This is the story of Tales From The Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey.
RECOGNIZING OUR POTENTIAL
Writing full-time since 2001, California-born Anastasia’s arts, culture and travel writing appeared in publications worldwide, from the Asian Wall Street Journal to the Village Voice. Soon after she moved from New York to Istanbul in 2003, she met Jennifer, a ten-year expat with a degree in literature and creative writing whose writing career had been on a slow burn since her move to Turkey. The Michigan native had been a staff writer for a popular expatriate humor magazine and contributed to other local magazines. To advance our professional aims we established a writing workshop in Fall 2003 with a handful of other American women writers.
Interaction during bi-weekly workshops revealed our compatibility and vision: within two months it was obvious that the writing group could spawn our first book-length project. Most pieces critiqued revolved around each woman’s Turkish experience and what it revealed about her personally.
By the 2004 Spring thaw we elicited the curiosity of a new Turkish/American publishing house in Istanbul. That was the trigger that launched us into high gear. Translating the small publisher’s casual interest into a writing exercise, we charged the group to fashion a book proposal, but our enthusiasm for the potential project quickly outstripped our group colleagues’ as we targeted what we knew could be a hit.
We had to act fast. World attention was increasingly focused on this much-maligned Muslim country as its new conservative religious party government enacted sweeping reforms to speed the country towards European Union membership. This was heat we could harness for our book.
Although Anastasia had worked in a New York literary agency and was somewhat familiar with the elements of a book proposal, we sought further guidance from published friends and writers’ online resources. Consumed with pushing the project forward, we covered ground swiftly, passing the ball when ideas slowed, inspired by each others’ fresh input.
BRANDING
Since we didn’t have established literary reputations to lend recognizable names, the title of the anthology needed immediate appeal, palpable impact. Something born of the literary circumstance we would collect: atmospheric travelogue; tales of cultural contrast and discovery in the streets, at weddings and workplaces, hamams and bazaars; and journeys of assimilation into friendship, neighborhood, wifehood, motherhood, citizenship, business and property ownership.
To decide concept and brand, we spun favorite motifs of female culture in Turkey, snagging on the quaint rural tradition of marking one’s visit by weaving distinctly colored thread into a friend’s carpet. But the earnest New Thread on the Loom: Outsiders in Turkish Culture sounded too woolly, academic, unmarketable.
Not a title we ourselves would snatch off a shelf or cuddle up with in bed.
Instead, the theme had to elicit strong response with a tempting metaphor that could withstand scrutiny. We hit on a conspicuous and controversial tradition of the region, provocative enough to intrigue or enflame book buyers worldwide. We created the Expat Harem.
We were banking on the title ruffling feathers. Anachronistic. Titillating. Bound to provoke reaction. We decided to co-opt the word harem, with all its erroneous Western stereotypes about Asia Minor and the entire Muslim world.
Infusing ‘harem’ with new meaning, we declared our foreign-born contributors were modern reflections of the foreign brides of the Ottoman sultans: wedded to the culture of the land, embedded in it even, but forever alien. Adding to the title’s seduction, we mocked up a book cover with an iconic Orientalist painting by Ingres, a reclining nude looking over her shoulder.
THE FIRST SALE
“We’d love to do this book!” said the owner of a new, young local publishing house, herself an American expat.
She bought the slim proposal composed in six weeks: a brief introduction to the Expat Harem concept, a list of chapters and proposed contents, editor bios, and an essay by Anastasia about a meet-the-parents trip to Istanbul which gave alarming Turkish connotation to her Russian name and urge to belly dance.
Despite the publisher’s limited resources and fledgling distribution network in Turkey and America, that overcast day in April 2004 we were thrilled to have our first book deal.
Undeterred that we bore the onus to propel the project to our envisioned heights, our adrenaline would compensate for all.
DOGGED PURSUIT
Between Anastasia's industry experience, drive, and efficiency and Jennifer's marketing background, local connections and knowledge of the Turkish language and culture, we complemented each other seamlessly.
Having a hands-off publisher was a blessing: it forced us to learn the ropes of book-making.
We called for submissions and publicized the project, set up a barebones website, posted flyers around Istanbul, and announced the book on bulletin boards and online communities of expatriates, writers, women writers, travelers, Turkey enthusiasts. We wrangled free listings in local city guidebooks. By July 2004 we convinced one of the top Turkish newspapers that the project was newsworthy and received a full page in the weekend lifestyle section, the first in a long line of local and international media coverage.
Responses began streaming in from the worldwide diaspora of eligible contributors. From West Africa to Southeast Asia to America’s Pacific Northwest, more than a hundred women sought to recount their sagas. We were overwhelmed with positive reactions to the project, and braced ourselves for darker interpretations. A few people chastised the title as unthinkably Orientalist while others were baited by our sexy cover.
“Wow, I wish I were an expat!” declared an airport security screener in New York.
ASKING FOR HELP
We brainstormed all of our personal and professional contacts—people who might assist us. We approached friends who had published books for their advice on the agenting process and targeting publishers. We sought mentoring from corporate friends on image and branding, marketing strategies, potential blurbists, and press contacts. We requested aid from family members with expertise in promotions and press relations.
With a few ready essays we began sending requests for blurbs to prominent people who had a strong connection to Turkey, like the author of the international bestseller Harem: The World Behind the Veil, and a prominent news correspondent for Le Monde and The Wall Street Journal. Positive quotes spurred reviews from increasingly higher profile experts. In September 2004 an international design team began to construct a cover for the book as a personal favor, including the raves that were rolling in from experts in expatriatism, women’s studies, the Ottoman harem, and Turkish society.
By the Frankfurt International Book Fair in October 2004, it was obvious to more people than just us that Tales from the Expat Harem was a hot property. Our proposal had expanded to 28 pages with seven essays, including tales from an archaeologist at Troy, a Christian missionary in Istanbul, a pregnant artist in the capital of Ankara, and a penniless Australian stricken with influenza in the moonscape of a wintry Cappadocia.
Unfortunately the Istanbul publisher’s catalog for the German fair revealed that our hot property was not being handled the way we thought it deserved. Calling a meeting with the Istanbul publisher, our priorities and expectations didn’t jibe with theirs. Amicably, we decided to cancel our contract.
Meanwhile, we reached out to a literary agent who had been following Anastasia’s writing career, since it was clear the book could benefit from professional representation. Within a month, his top New York literary agency agreed to represent us.
Suddenly several Turkish publishing houses approached us after reading about Expat Harem in the local media and we explored their interest even though we had already set our sights elsewhere. Freed from the limited resources of our first publisher, we aimed for the best Turkey had to offer: Dogan Kitap. The strongest publisher in the country, Dogan Kitap is part of the largest Turkish media conglomerate of television and radio stations, newspapers and magazine holdings and a nationwide chain of bookstores. But we didn’t approach the publisher first…
Instead, we contacted the owner of one of Dogan’s television stations who is known for her active involvement in promoting the image of women in Turkey, which dovetailed nicely with the theme of our project. Through professional connections we also requested aid from the head of Dogan’s magazine holdings. By the time Dogan’s book publishing branch received our request for an appointment, they had already heard about us through those two executives and had seen coverage of the book via three of their news outlets and at least two of their competitors. Our follow up call secured us a meeting with the publisher’s general manager in December 2004.
“You’ve come to the right address,” he declared. Then we didn’t hear from Dogan again.
THE SUBMISSION PROCESS
The vast potential of the project began to dawn as our agent compared it to accessible personal stories of life in the Middle East, bestselling titles like Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Bookseller of Kabul. He began submitting the growing ms to U.S. publishers.
“What could be more timely than an insider’s view of women’s lives in the Middle East—as told by resident Westerners?”
We asked this in our November press release, generated in four languages and sent to foreign press correspondents in Istanbul, followed up with phone calls. Agence France Presse, one of the world’s largest news agencies, interviewed us before an important European Union vote on Turkey, while in February 2005 Newsweek International published our letter to the editor, exposing the upcoming anthology to more than a million readers across Europe.
Meanwhile, in New York, an editor at a publishing house known for its anthologies effusively praised the manuscript but her editorial board demurred.
Turkey was too small a subject they felt, suggesting we expand the book to other Muslim nations like Sudan, Kosovo, and Iran. We countered with a franchise series of Expat Harem books. Too large a project, they said. Editors at ten other New York houses also were split in their reactions, recognizing the appeal of the Muslim setting and the foreign female focus, yet unconvinced that a collection by unknown writers would draw major audiences. By February 2005 all the top New York houses had passed so we targeted more independent houses, university presses and those which had published our blurbists.
STAYING POSITIVE
During the excruciating winter months of ms submissions, sustaining enthusiasm wasn’t easy. Doubts began to multiply. We hadn’t heard back from Dogan Kitap, they weren’t answering our emails, and U.S. publishers weren’t biting. Taking inspiration from a chapter in our own book, one devoted to Turkey’s shamanistic roots and methods of banishing the envious evil eye, we created a ritual to cast off negative energy.
We wrote down fears we had discussed as well as those we would not openly admit to having: ‘We will not find a publisher. We will not finish the book. No one will read it. It will be embarrassing to promote…’
Then we burned the list – and not just anywhere. Since the Expat Harem co-opted the image of the Ottoman harem, we headed to the Topkapi Palace, visited the chambers of our namesakes, and asked their blessings. In an outside courtyard, we literally reduced our fears to ashes.
We also considered the mindset of our agent. It can’t be easy to break bad news to clients so we never expected our agent to be our cheerleader. We responded to his rejection emails with the successes we were achieving on our front.
We invested no energy in the negativity of others. Without rebutting critics, we would smile and say, ‘we’ll see’ as if we knew something they didn’t.
Naysayers couldn’t argue our continued success when they-- along with all our contacts-- received bubbly email announcements every time we appeared in the media, received a new blurb, or made another advance.
MARKETING
We both have professional experience and a personal predilection for marketing and turned our attention to finding every opportunity to get the word out. Before we had one page of the manuscript, we had already perused John Kremer’s 1001 Ways To Market Your Books, were tracking academic conferences in which we might participate, researching comparable books, and compiling lists of audiences and organizations that might like to host us as speakers.
Even so, the book was rejected by fifteen publishers before we tackled the daunting official marketing plan. Most editors commented that they liked the idea but didn’t see the market. Was Turkey truly too far from the U.S.A. to matter to American audiences?
We needed to make our case and identify potential markets American publishers might not traditionally consider.
In January 2005 we defined our main audiences as having something in common with the contributors:
We noted the 1.2 million Americans who’ve traveled to Turkey in the past five years, the 87 Turkish American associations serving more than 88,000 Turkish nationals in America plus tens of thousands of Americans with Turkish heritages, women’s and Middle Eastern studies programs at hundreds of North American universities, and specific Turkophile populations like the alumni of the Peace Corps who served in Turkey. We also compiled more practical subsidiary audiences. Multinational corporations with operations in Turkey, embassies and tourism organizations might use the book as a cross-cultural training tool or a promotional vehicle.
We imagined the book developing a positive image of Turkey abroad, addressing the unvoiced but deep concern of many businesspeople, travelers and diplomats: will our women be safe?
SECOND AND THIRD SALES
Unsure how to interpret Dogan Kitap’s silence, we wondered if they had been serious about our book. After our visit in December, why didn’t they call? Why didn’t they answer our emails or those from our agent? Staying positive, we phoned until we secured follow-up appointments by the end of January, and at that meeting they acted as if the project were already theirs. Contrary to our gloomy speculation, their behemoth operation had slowed their response. Reluctant to misstep, they seemed hesitant to start negotiations until our agent sent them a draft contract in English. Though Dogan originally planned to publish only in Turkish, on the strength of our marketing plan we convinced them that the local English language market was large enough to warrant two editions. In February 2005, Dogan bought the Turkish world rights and the English rights for Turkey.
Success snowballed. On Valentine’s Day, the feminist imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, Seal Press, offered us a publishing contract for the North American rights! When Seal’s marketing department presented the book at a June 2005 presales conference to book distributors from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others, everyone was ‘flushed with amazement’ at our detailed marketing plan.
SPAWNING CONTINUED MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES
The marketing never ends! In April 2005 we produced at our own expense 5,000 promotional postcards with our book cover, photos, website address and reviews from scholars, journalists and diplomats, distributing them via our worldwide contributors. When the postcard found its way into the hands of the producer of Publishing Trends, an American book industry intelligence newsletter, Tales from the Expat Harem garnered nearly a page of coverage in the June 2005 issue, winning us the attention of a highly influential international publishing audience.
Our website consistently delivers a stream of queries from people identifying themselves as future book buyers while our web-tracking reveals the growing global audience we’ve created in the past year. Thirty-five hundred visitors from 90 countries have dropped by since we began tracking site activity. To tap into this ready-made market, our publishers set up pre-sales via internet bookstores, while our local speaking engagements have generated offers for additional receptions and book signings.
We kept the pressure on once the book was released in Turkey, using the printed books to seek new media coverage and fresh blurbs in September 2005. Stephen Kinzer, the former New York Times Istanbul bureau chief, offered us a quote for the cover of our Seal Press edition. We also turned our attention to the official launch party scheduled for November.
Since our publisher’s launch party budget didn’t cover our starry-eyed fantasy of an event at the Topkapı Palace harem, we looked for a sponsor.
Though we didn’t exactly end up with our fantasy, through fearless soliciting we did land a prominent hostess for our 200 person cocktail at a 5-star hotel—the owner of a Dogan television station who initially paved the way for our book deal. A woman concerned with Turkey’s image abroad, and in particular with the perception of women’s lives in Turkey, she invited her own A-list guests as well as our growing list of international press correspondents, blurbists, supporters, and many of the influential people we hope to cultivate.
The event was broadcast on television news for several days, and featured in newspapers, their glossy weekend supplements, and magazines.
HARD WORK PAYS OFF
At the Istanbul International Book Fair in October 2005, where we headed a panel discussion and had a book signing, our Turkish publisher promoted Türkçe Sevmek, the translation of Tales from the Expat Harem, on a 15 foot illuminated display alongside its translations of Umberto Eco and Julia Navarro.
After hitting the Turkish bookshelves, both Dogan editions sold out within six weeks, with the English edition debuting on the bestseller lists at several national bookstore chains and making its way to the number two spot – beating out two J.K. Rowlings, a Michael Connelly and three Dan Browns.
We have appeared on a handful of national television stations, including three different CNN-TURK shows which were simultaneously broadcast on CNN-TURK radio, and have been invited to appear on several other stations; we were featured in all the top national Turkish and English newspapers, with one providing three consecutive days of extensive coverage during one of the country’s highest circulation weeks; we are sitting for interviews with specialized media; we’re fielding requests for review copies from international culture journals; and, quite edifyingly, we are meeting readers as well as our expat peers in cities throughout Turkey on weekend book tours.
[This article first appeared in a slightly different form in ABSOLUTE WRITE, 2006]
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Excerpts from a joint interview with Zeynep Kilic of the Bosphorus Art Project Quarterly and my Expat Harem coeditor Jennifer Gokmen. See full interview here. Q: What inspired you to start this project? What is your vision?
AA: Jennifer and I created a writing workshop with a few other American women in Istanbul and soon realized we were all writing about our lives in Turkey. We thought if we collected the stories we might begin to piece together the puzzle that is Turkey. It was a ripe idea and the floodgates opened. We heard from more than 100 women from 14 nations whose lives have been touched by Turkey in the past 50 years – and we’re meeting more women of the Expat Harem every day!
Q: In every country in the world the equality of women and men is skewed in at least one or more of these categories: economical, social, reproductive and human rights. What did you find were the greatest challenges for women native to Turkey? The women expatriates? The greatest triumphs?
AA: What’s interesting is to me are personal perceptions about equality. Turkish women have taught us and many of the expatriates in Expat Harem what strength there is in being a woman. Western culture seems to have stripped the power from femininity; it has confused us into thinking that to be taken seriously, we must dress and act like men. The ancient wisdom of Anatolia’s goddess culture is alive and well in Turkey, and in Turkey’s women.
A challenge for Turkish women seems to be attaining the independence many expatriates enjoy. Turkish society is so inter-dependent there are few acceptable lifestyle options for the loner, even in the most modern families.
Q: Your book has become a bestseller in Turkey, was this something that you expected or did it come as a surprise?
AA: The book’s strong performance probably has less to do with our gender than the fact that it taps into an interest great numbers of people have…Turks want to know what foreigners are thinking of them, while expatriates want to see if their fellow foreign nationals have had similar experiences. And people who have left the country (including Peace Corps volunteers who were here 40 years ago) are eager to relive their Turkish memories!
Q: Is there an underlying theme other than expatriation that links all of these stories? What do you hope the reader takes away from this reading experience?
AA: Besides exploring the land and culture, these women are exploring themselves. They’re on journeys of self realization. Turkey happens to be the backdrop. Their tales show how Turkish culture has affected their lives as they navigate their way into friendship, neighborhood, wifehood, and motherhood in Turkey.
AA: Perhaps readers will understand how much another culture can show you who you are, and how you can change, if you want to.
Q: What do you think about how Turkey is represented in today’s world? What do you think can be done to extend the reach of Turkish arts and culture across the world?
AA: Turkey has a dark and contentious reputation, with conflicts like historical ethnic and geographic rivalries dominating news coming out the country. Although it has a rich creative heritage, that’s not the first thing people think of. A fictionalized Oliver Stone movie from the 1970s comes to mind, or a sad report they heard on NPR. Many of the writers in our anthology have had to defend their choice to live in Turkey since friends and relatives back home were worried for their safety – and their sanity!
AA: In this same way, extending the reach of Turkey’s art and culture is a matter of enticement. Enticing people to learn more, and making the introduction as accessible as possible. In Tales from the Expat Harem each writer acts as a guide into her world, and the Turkey that she knows. Readers will go along with her to meet an art gallery owner in Ankara whose ancestors were fortunetellers of the sultan; they’ll whirl through the streets with Gypsy dancers; they’ll be invited into the ritual bath of an Anatolian bride.
Q: What is your favorite thing about living in Turkey and the least favorite?
AA: For me it’s the same thing: the close observation of my life by family and neighbors. For an independent Western woman it can be disconcerting to feel every move is watched – and reported! What time I went to sleep, who came over to the house, things like that. But on the flip side, this very scrutiny is what makes me feel safe and cared for, especially since the motivations for this are not malicious, or even necessarily having to do anything with me. People-watching seems to be a national pastime. If I need help from my family or neighbors I know I can count on them, and perhaps they would even know I needed help before I told them myself. One tale in our book is about that very phenomenon: an ill Australian is rescued by her neighbors who notice she hasn’t left the house in days.
Q: Do you have any recommendations or advice for people planning a move to Turkey or another country?
AA: Take extra care to supply yourself with what you need to be happy, wherever you are. Feeling light-hearted and productive is important when you suddenly are surrounded by so many new situations. You’ll need that inner strength in order to remain flexible about things you can’t control or don’t understand. Try to get up to speed on what life might be like in Turkey. When we were brainstorming the anthology’s concept we imagined it could be a cultural primer for newcomers to the country. It will be wonderful if people actually use it that way. Women about to wed Turks have said the book made clear which aspects of their relationship have to do with the culture and which are individual to the couple.
Q: Do you have any projects planned for the future?
AA: We’ve been asked by our Turkish publisher to consider doing a male version of the anthology. That would elicit a very different set of views on the country… Currently I’m at work on a collection of my own cultural essays Berkeley to Byzantium: The Reorientation of a West Coast Adventuress, a travel memoir charting the peaks and valleys of my life, from mean elevators and subways of Manhattan to the gilded palaces of Asia Minor -- and Southeast Asia, where I lived for five years.
Thoughts I shared in an expatriate group: About a decade ago I lived in South East Asia for five years. I know some of you are longtime, veteran expats and hope you'll indulge me when I share my developing philosophy about being an expatriate.
I have found the more that I honor what is meaningful to me, the more my expatriate life takes care of itself.
For instance, when I moved to Istanbul from New York City, I was committed to writing a memoir. Soon it was supplanted by another literary project which helped me not only create a solid foundation for my life here, but incidentally, for the travel memoir I have now returned to.
Along with a fellow American expat, I edited a collection of true tales of cultural conflict and discovery written by foreign women from seven nations about their lives in modern Turkey.
It's put my Turkish experience into perspective, brought me quickly up to speed on the region's culture, connected me with my foreign and local peers and other personal and professional communities of interest, and has fueled my writing career.
This is a result miles away from the disenfranchisement I felt in Malaysia, languishing in the jungle, attending social events with people marginally related to me and my interests, never quite being myself, never sure how I was going to fit in or if I even wanted to.
My Mediabistro alumni interview with Claire Zulkey for Mediabistro Toolbox. I took Mediabistro's first media program given by creator of the series, Victoria Rowan, in 2005.
I took Parris Island Journalism Boot Camp with Victoria Rowan, Fall 2001, eager to reinvigorate – and focus — my writing career after being laid off from a trade magazine editorship.
Also, like many writers who have not explicitly studied journalism or the business of writing, I knew I could benefit from a more professional approach to the craft.
Yes. One week we interviewed newsworthy acquaintances and tried to sell the profiles. With that material I published a profile/book review/event announcement in the Village Voice — the managing editor’s hybrid idea when I emphasized the curating work my multimedia poet interviewee was doing at St. Mark’s Poetry Project, and an upcoming performance there of a new Brion Gysin book.
Thanks to Victoria’s pragmatic ‘so-what, why this audience, why now’ coaching, emphasizing these elements of my pitch set my subject at the helm of an upcoming event where avant garde artworld legends would be appearing. The right story for the right audience.
I also understood from Bootcamp that I had a time hook most appropriate for a weekly newspaper like the Voice. The editor’s suggestion entailed a lot more work but Bootcamp taught me that if an editor was gracious enough to tell me exactly what he could use all I needed to do was accept the challenge. As Victoria explained, “We’re here to eliminate the reasons an editor has to reject your work.”
MB’s Bootcamp offered operable information about writing and selling in seven genres (personal essays, travel, op-ed, business features, profiles and reviews and tone-dependent pieces like the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town).
I benefited most from Victoria’s deconstructive clarity about composing and selling nonfiction writing — and today it is appreciable how much I learned about piloting a writing career.
We conducted an Expat Harem panel at the 24th Istanbul Book Fair with editors and writers including Kathy Hamilton, Katie Belliel and Valerie Tasiran. The anthology was also launched there, featured at the Dogan Kitapcilik stand.
Consulted on web content for this well-aging spa and detox center on Turkey's Aegean coast, 2005 (took the photos here too)
Calling all women writers who have lived, worked, studied or traveled in Turkey for at least a year: Contribute your voice to a new anthology of foreign women’s reflections on modern Turkey. Deadline: August 1, 2004 TALES FROM THE EXPAT HAREM: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey, edited by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokmen
The book aims to be a personal, entertaining read for both students and scholars of Turkey as well as armchair cultural travelers, fans of women’s literature, and expatriates of all stripes.
During Ottoman rule, the word 'harem' (from the word ‘haram’, meaning sacred and forbidden) referred to both the population as well as the living quarters of the foreign-born brides and servants of the Turkish sultan. An intimate and confined community of women, it was a place for sharing womanly wisdom and cultivating cultural tradition.
In this non-fiction anthology we invoke a modern day Turkish harem with its chorus of voices and shared female experience -- in the sense that the expatriate population is naturally cohesive and isolated due to the process of assimilation. Newcomers learning to maneuver within a new set of variables and cultural boundaries necessarily experience a limitation of freedom: language barriers act as an obstacle to travel and independence, cultural naivete hinders social interaction, and ethnocentric rigidity impedes dynamic experience.
Taking the reader on humorous and poignant journeys of cultural contrast and discovery, our contributors break free of the confines of the harem, breaching the confined world of the unassimilated to touch the true heart of Turkey. Whether newly arrived or well-established expatriates, or Turks repatriating to their homeland after a long absence, all our contributors are foreign brides of modern Turkey: wedded to its culture, embedded in it even, and yet forever outsiders.
We are looking for high-quality personal essays, insightful flash non-fiction and colorful travelogue--in English, 2,500 words or less. Unpublished work is preferred, although well-crafted previously published work will be considered.
Further information and to submit work please visit the rudimentary site: www.expatharem.com
Inquiries info@expatharem.com
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TIPS FOR WRITERS
We prefer personal essays with evocative language and dialogue, detailed description that sets the scene and sketches the people. You may have heard this type of writing referred to as creative or literary nonfiction – facts conveyed with the devices of a novelist.
TELL US A TALE, A MOMENT WHEN YOUR SENSE OF SELF WAS CHALLENGED, WHEN YOU LEARNED A TRUTH ABOUT TURKISH CULTURE.
SET THE STAGE – TELL US WHO YOU ARE, WHERE YOU ARE, HOW YOU CAME TO BE THERE AND THEN TELL US WHAT HAPPENED.
BE SPECIFIC. FOCUS ON YOUR THEME WITH EVERY PARAGRAPH MOVING FORWARD TO YOUR DESTINATION, YOUR POINT. DESCRIBE DETAILS THAT YOU WANT US TO EXPERIENCE. GIVE US A SENSE OF PLACE, A SKETCH OF A PERSON. SIGHTS, SOUNDS, SMELLS.
BE LIKEABLE. REGARDLESS OF TOPIC, WIN US OVER WITH YOUR HUMANITY, YOUR HUMOR, YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS. REVEAL YOUR MOTIVATIONS, AND BE POSITIVE.
BE RELEVANT. HOW DOES YOUR STORY FIT INTO THE BOOK? WHICH ASPECT OF TURKISH CULTURE, OR BEING A FOREIGN WOMAN IN TURKEY, DOES IT ILLUMINATE?
POSSIBLE BREAKING POINTS/BOUNDARIES/AREAS OF ILLUMINATION
TIPS FOR NONWRITERS
TELL US A TALE, A MOMENT WHEN YOUR SENSE OF SELF WAS CHALLENGED, WHEN YOU LEARNED A TRUTH ABOUT TURKISH CULTURE.
SET THE STAGE – TELL US WHO YOU ARE, WHERE YOU ARE, HOW YOU CAME TO BE THERE AND THEN TELL US WHAT HAPPENED.
BE SPECIFIC. FOCUS ON YOUR THEME WITH EVERY PARAGRAPH MOVING FORWARD TO YOUR DESTINATION, YOUR POINT. DESCRIBE DETAILS THAT YOU WANT US TO EXPERIENCE. GIVE US A SENSE OF PLACE, A SKETCH OF A PERSON. SIGHTS, SOUNDS, SMELLS.
BE LIKEABLE. REGARDLESS OF TOPIC, WIN US OVER WITH YOUR HUMANITY, YOUR HUMOR, YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS. REVEAL YOUR MOTIVATIONS, AND BE POSITIVE.
BE RELEVANT. HOW DOES YOUR STORY FIT INTO THE BOOK? WHICH ASPECT OF TURKISH CULTURE, OR BEING A FOREIGN WOMAN IN TURKEY, DOES IT ILLUMINATE?
