sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

Kutlu’s life‐narrative offers the growing‐up story of a writer in the making. In her article on Zaman
da Eskir, Nevin Koyuncu rightly identifies the River Asi as a powerful symbol for Kutlu’s struggle
against the established norms of the society that devalues women.36 Kutlu’s attachment to her
region is visible in all her writings and she sees the river Asi as a life force and the source of vitality
for the region. Her 2012 novel Asi… Asi takes its title from the river that Kutlu defines in this novel as
“the primordial and most inspirational river that has generated all the civilizations and beauty” in her
region.37 In the novel she writes: “Asi was a reverse and weary river. Originating in the mountain, it
goes to the west, down, to the sea . . . then has a change of heart; meandering it goes up to the
north.”38 Similarly, in her narrative Kutlu recreates her early life as a relentless struggle against social
and cultural conventions which regulate gender roles and describes herself as “weary” for going
against the demands of society. While doing that, she narrates not only the story of her growing up
in a small city in the south‐east corner of the Mediterranean in mid‐twentieth century Turkey but
also provides episodes from the lives of her grandmothers, aunts, female neighbors, relatives, and
friends; in short, she articulates stories of women who one way or another touched her life. Kutlu’s
re‐piecing of her childhood and early youth in her autobiography reveals a multitude of diverse ways
the literary imagination of a prospective writer is vitalized by her region and its women. And the
product of her retrospective journey, the story of her Bildung, is a lasting proof that despite the high
emotional price she paid, she ultimately achieved a secure sense of self identity and a meaningful
place in public life.
Keywords: Ayla Kutlu, Zaman da Eskir, Autobiography
Prof.Dilek DİRENÇ
Ege University, Faculty of Letters, Department of English Language and Literature
Notes
1
Memoir is defined as a type of “life narrative that historically situates the subject in a social
environment, as either observer or participant”; different from autobiography, “it directs
attention more toward the lives and actions of others than to the narrator” (Smith and Watson
Autobiography 198). Linda Anderson observes that by the nineteenth century “autobiography
came to be equated with a developmental narrative which orders both time and the personality
according to a purpose or goal” and consequently memoir, with its fragmented form, came to
occupy “a lower order” in the hierarchy of life narratives (8).
2
Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. Autobiography. (Minneapolis & London: U of Minnesota P, 2001), 101‐
2.
3
Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. Autobiography. (Minneapolis & London: U of Minnesota P,
2001), 102.
4
Ibid.
5
Jill Johnston. “Fictions of the Self in the Making” The Johnston Letter 5. 3 (2010).
http://www.danceinsider.com/free/0124.html.
6
Ibid.
7
It can be rightly observed that in addition to the genre of the Bildungsroman, Zaman da Eskir
also draws upon the Künstlerroman since it relates the story of an emerging artist.
8
Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. Autobiography. (Minneapolis & London: U of Minnesota P,
2001), 189.
9 Ayla Kutlu. Zaman da Eskir. (İstanbul: Bilgi Yayınevi, 2006), 5.
All translations from Kutlu’s works in this paper belong to me.
10
Ayla Kutlu. Zaman da Eskir. (İstanbul: Bilgi Yayınevi, 2006), 5‐6.
11
Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. Autobiography. (Minneapolis & London: U of Minnesota P,
2001), 16.
12
Ibid.
13
As Daniel L. Schacter puts forward, “memories are records of how we have experienced events,