Download or read book Women s Voices from Kurdistan A Selection of Kurdish Poetry written by Clémence Scalbert Yücel and published by Transnational Press London. This book was released on 2021-04-12 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the backdrop of war and violence, social-political as well as lingual repressions, and the challenges presented by a patriarchal society, Kurdish poetesses have been creating meaningful work throughout the centuries. This collection of translated poems brings to light some of these underrepresented female writers, whose work has been essential to the development of Kurdish poetry. Representing various Kurdish regions and dialects, this volume of selected poems touches upon themes such as sexuality, violence, gender domination, intimacy, fantasy, and romantic love. While this collection offers illuminating insights into the work of Kurdish poetesses, it is the hope of its creators, the Exeter Kurdish Translation Initiative, that it inspires further translations and publication of Kurdish literature. This beautiful and groundbreaking collection of English translations from Gorani, Sorani, Kurmanji, and Arabic was achieved through an innovative collaborative translation project in the Centre for Kurdish Studies, University of Exeter. From the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, it expresses women’s voices on politics, nationalism, gender, love, science, education, and everyday Kurdishness in memory, elegy, dream, and discourse. See such haunting lines from Gulîzer as “May those who have stayed not say the leaving is easy./ May those who have left not say the staying is simple.” Or “When two rivers separate/ How do they part their water?” Anyone interested in women’s poetry, diaspora, translation, and transnation will want to hear these poems. – Regenia Gagnier FBA, author of Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century and editor, The Global Circulation Project The vivid image of love, lost, hope, beauty, desire, violence, pain, and suffering that are sketched in this book enchant and attract readers to enter into a more intimate lives of Kurdish women. In this exquisite collection of poems written by Kurdish women and translated into English for the first time, we are exposed to a more imaginative way of hearing Kurdish women’s voices. It is in the interstices of lived words and the lifeworld that Kurdish women poets candidly dream freedom and suggest ways to move beyond all forms of oppression and violence. – Shahrzad Mojab, Professor, University of Toronto and the editor of Women of Non-State Nation: The Kurds. CONTENTS Translating Kurdish Poetry as a Collective Endeavour – Farangis Ghaderi and Clémence Scalbert Yücel Unsung Poets of Kurdistan: A Reflection on Women’s Voices in Kurdish Poetry – Farangis Ghaderi and Clémence Scalbert-Yücel Mestûre Erdelan Hêmin Fayeq Bêkes Jîla Huseynî Diya Ciwan Tîroj Trîfa Doskî Viyan M. Tahir Gulîzer

Download or read book Kurdish Women s Stories written by Houzan Mahmoud and published by University of Alberta. This book was released on 2017-03-24 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From all four parts of Kurdistan and across the diaspora, Kurdish women from different geographical, political, and educational backgrounds pick up a pen, reflect, and remember. Going beyond exoticising stereotypes and patriarchal representations, Kurdish Women's Stories gives 25 women authorial freedom to write about their own lived experiences. With contributors ranging from 20 to 70 years of age, we hear stories of imprisonment, exile, disappearances of loved ones, gender-based violence, uprisings, feminist activism, and armed resistance, including first-hand accounts of political moments from the 1960s to today. Conceived as part of Culture Project's self- writing program, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand the struggle of Kurdish women through their own words. Contributors: Diba Alikhani, Kobra Banehi, Khanda Hameed, Nazanin Hasan, Nafia Aysi Hasso, Deejila Haydar, Zhala Hussein, Ruken Isik, Seveen Jimo, Lanja Khawe, Nahiya Khoshkalam, Hero Kurda, Khanda Rashid Murad, Rozhgar Mustafa, Dashne Nariman, Bayan Nasih, Avan Omar, Nasrin Ramazanali, Mother Sabria, Bayan Saeed, Bayan Salman, Farah Sharefi, Susan Shahab, Simal (Anonymous), Shahla Yarhussein"--

Download or read book Voices That Matter written by Marlene Schäfers and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-12-23 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fine-grained ethnography exploring the sociopolitical power of Kurdish women’s voices in contemporary Turkey. “Raise your voice!” and “Speak up!” are familiar refrains that assume, all too easily, that gaining voice will lead to empowerment, healing, and inclusion for marginalized subjects. Marlene Schäfers’s Voices That Matter reveals where such assumptions fall short, demonstrating that “raising one’s voice” is no straightforward path to emancipation but fraught with anxieties, dilemmas, and contradictions. In its attention to the voice as form, this book examines not only what voices say but also how they do so, focusing on Kurdish contexts where oral genres have a long, rich legacy. Examining the social labor that voices carry out as they sound, speak, and resonate, Schäfers shows that where new vocal practices arise, they produce new selves and practices of social relations. In Turkey, recent decades have seen Kurdish voices gain increasing moral and political value as metaphors of representation and resistance. Women’s voices, in particular, are understood as potent means to withstand patriarchal restrictions and political oppression. By ethnographically tracing the transformations in how Kurdish women relate to and employ their voices as a result of these shifts, Schäfers illustrates how contemporary politics foster not only new hopes and desires but also create novel vulnerabilities as they valorize, elicit, and discipline voice in the name of empowerment and liberation.

Download or read book Women in the Kurdish Movement written by Handan Çağlayan and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-10-21 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first historical account of Kurdish women’s politicization in Turkey, starting from the mid-1980s. Çağlayan presents a critical feminist analysis through women’s everyday experiences, incorporating women’s self-narrations with her own autoethnographic reflections. The author provides an account of the socio-political dynamics which constrained women’s politicization, of the factors and mechanisms which enabled their political activism, and of the construction of women’s political history through their own narrations. Women in the Kurdish Movement is a highly original contribution to Kurdish women’s political history. It will be key reading for students and scholars across various disciplines with an interest in gender, political participation, everyday resistance, feminist methodology, nationalism, ethnicity, secularism, social movements, post-colonial studies, and the Middle East.

Download or read book Women of Kurdistan A Historical and Bibliographic Study written by Shahrzad Mojab and published by Transnational Press London. This book was released on 2021-04-19 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women of Kurdistan: A Historical and Bibliographic Study documents a century long history of Kurdish women’s struggles against oppressive gender relations and state violence. It speaks to bibliographic silences on Kurdish women; silences that are systemic and structured, with many factors contributing to their (re)production. The book records extensive literature on violence perpetrated by the family, community, and the state as well as presenting the reader with a vibrant archive of resistance and struggle of Kurdish women. The analysis avoids the fashionable state-centered scholarship, which purifies processes of nation-building, state-building, and disguises their violence. The image depicted of the women of Kurdistan in this bibliography is shaped also by the languages we have chosen: English, French, and German. It is a record of material in languages that are not spoken by the majority of the Kurds. It will, therefore, be different from a bibliography of works in the Kurdish language, which have a majority of Kurdish authors, with more entries on topics such as poetry, fiction, education, and arts. "Love and learning made the making of this bibliography imaginable. It began more than 20 years ago when Amir was expanding his theoretical ground for class analysis of nationalism and peasant movement in the Kurdish region of Mukriyan (Hassanpour, 2021). Simultaneously, I was engaged with debates on Marxist feminism and transnational feminism while grappling with post-al tendencies in feminism such as post-colonialism, post-structuralism, and post-modernism. We wanted to better understand the explanatory power and political implications of Marx’s dialectical historical materialism in explicating the intersecting and refracting relations of gender, class, race, culture, nation, and nationalism. This commitment, nonetheless, did not remain in the realm of epistemology as a disembodied intellectual exercise. As a member of a dominant nation–a Shirazi born Iranian–I wanted to critically confront this national “identity” and the sense of “belonging.” Amir sought to scrutinize patriarchal structures and gender relations in Kurdish history, society, culture, and nation. This intertwined mind and heart desire put us onto a path of renewed discoveries of our personal and intellectual relations. In a nutshell, this was the beginning of the making of Women of Kurdistan: A Historical and Bibliographic Study." Women of Kurdistan provides a meticulously researched source book for readers interested in women, gender, and sexuality in Kurdistan and the Middle East. It covers a wealth of bibliographic material, including both scholarly and non-academic publications, many of which have not previously been accessible to broader audiences. But Women of Kurdistan is more than a source of information. It is also an eloquent reflection on the entanglement of knowledge production and political power, and a call to recognize scholarship’s potential in shaping historical change. Above all, it is a passionate statement about the impossibility to comprehend the intersection of colonial, capitalist, and nationalist forces without attention to women’s lives and struggles. - Marlene Schäfers, British Academy Newton International Fellow, University of Cambridge. Women of Kurdistan is simply an excellent template for how to chronicle women’s resistance politics. By framing the Kurdish women’s struggles within a historical materialism under different modes of production and discussing the political influence of five different nations on the Kurdish peoples, the authors offer a rich context that surpasses the common fetishization of women’s armed resistance. Internationally known for their Marxist and feminist works, Mojab and Hassanpour apply theories of nationalism, capitalism, peasantry, knowledge production, and relationship between state and non-state to understand the Kurdish experience, while honouring the struggle, voice, and poetry of Kurdish women activists. The book is as unapologetically critical of regional and religious hegemonies as it is of Kurdish patriarchies and is candid about the slipperiness of the concept of the “ideal Kurdish woman,” while skeptical of the benefits of transnationalization for the women honoured in this book. - Afiya Zia, author of Faith and Feminism: Religious Agency or Secular Autonomy? CONTENTS PART I. THE MAKING OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHY THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT KURDISH WOMEN WOMEN OF KURDISTAN PART II. WOMEN OF KURDISTAN: A BIBLIOGRAPHIC STUDY GENERAL WORKS ARTS AND CULTURE CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS DISPLACEMENT, REFUGEES, AND MIGRATION EDUCATION ETHNIC FORMATIONS FEMINIST AND WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS GENDER RELATIONS GENOCIDE, GENDERCIDE, WAR CRIMES, AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY GEOGRAPHY HEALTH AND MEDICINE HISTORY LANGUAGE LAW LITERATURE POLITICS RELIGION SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION WAR AND PEACE APPENDIX INDEX

Download or read book The Kurdish Women s Freedom Movement written by Isabel Käser and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amidst ongoing wars and insecurities, female fighters, politicians and activists of the Kurdish Freedom Movement are building a new political system that centres gender equality. Since the Rojava Revolution, the international focus has been especially on female fighters, a gaze that has often been essentialising and objectifying, brushing over a much more complex history of violence and resistance. Going beyond Orientalist tropes of the female freedom fighter, and the movement's own narrative of the 'free woman', Isabel Käser looks at personal trajectories and everyday processes of becoming a militant in this movement. Based on in-depth ethnographic research in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, with women politicians, martyr mothers and female fighters, she looks at how norms around gender and sexuality have been rewritten and how new meanings and practices have been assigned to women in the quest for Kurdish self-determination. Her book complicates prevailing notions of gender and war and creates a more nuanced understanding of the everyday embodied epistemologies of violence, conflict and resistance.

Download or read book Daughters of Smoke and Fire written by Ava Homa and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The unforgettable, haunting story of a young woman’s perilous fight for freedom and justice for her brother, the first novel published in English by a female Kurdish writer Set primarily in Iran, this extraordinary debut novel weaves 50 years of modern Kurdish history through a story of a family facing oppression and injustices all too familiar to the Kurds. Leila dreams of making films to bring the suppressed stories of her people onto the global stage, but obstacles keep piling up. Her younger brother, Chia, influenced by their father’s past torture, imprisonment, and his deep-seated desire for justice, begins to engage with social and political affairs. But his activism grows increasingly risky and one day he disappears in Tehran. Seeking answers about her brother’s whereabouts, Leila fears the worst and begins a campaign to save him. But when she publishes Chia’s writings online, she finds herself in grave danger as well. Inspired by the life of Kurdish human rights activist Farzad Kamangar and published to coincide with the 10th anniversary of his execution, Daughters of Smoke and Fire is an evocative portrait of the lives and stakes faced by 40 million stateless Kurds. It’s an unflinching but compassionate and powerful story that brilliantly illuminates the meaning of identity and the complex bonds of family. A landmark novel for our troubled world, Daughters of Smoke and Fire is a gripping and important read, perfect for fans of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.

Download or read book A Voice from Kurdistan written by Mozafar Mohammadi and published by . This book was released on 199? with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Road Unforeseen written by Meredith Tax and published by Bellevue Literary Press. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is the book I’ve been waiting for—only it’s richer, deeper, and more intriguing than I could have imagined. A Road Unforeseen is a major contribution to our understanding of feminism and Islam, of women and the world, and gives me fresh hope for change.” —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed and Living With a Wild God In war-torn northern Syria, a democratic society—based on secularism, ethnic inclusiveness, and gender equality—has won significant victories against the Islamic State, or Daesh, with women on the front lines as fierce warriors and leaders. A Road Unforeseen recounts the dramatic, underreported history of the Rojava Kurds, whose all-women militia was instrumental in the perilous mountaintop rescue of tens of thousands of civilians besieged in Iraq. Up to that point, the Islamic State had seemed invincible. Yet these women helped vanquish them, bringing the first half of the refugees to safety within twenty-four hours. Who are the revolutionary women of Rojava and what lessons can we learn from their heroic story? How does their political philosophy differ from that of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Islamic State, and Turkey? And will the politics of the twenty-first century be shaped by the opposition between these political models? Meredith Tax is a writer and political activist. Author, most recently, of Double Bind: The Muslim Right, the Anglo-American Left, and Universal Human Rights, she was founding president of Women’s WORLD, a global free speech network of feminist writers, and cofounder of the PEN American Center’s Women’s Committee and the International PEN Women Writers’ Committee. She is currently international board chair of the Centre for Secular Space and lives in New York.

Download or read book Youth Identity Politics and Change in Contemporary Kurdistan written by Shivan Fazil and published by Transnational Press London. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today’s youth are challenging the older political class around the world and are forming new political generations. Examples from South Africa and elsewhere where peace processes were deemed to be successful show signs of youth disapproval of the current post-conflict conditions. Moreover, the Arab Spring witnessed numerous youth movements emerge in authoritarian and illiberal contexts. This book was prepared in light of these discussions and aims to contribute to these ongoing debates on youth politics by presenting the situation of youth in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) as a case study. It will be the first book that specifically focuses on the Iraqi Kurdish youth and their political, social, and economic participation in Kurdistan. The contemporary history of the KRI is marked by conflict, war, and ethnic cleansing under Saddam Hussein and the tyranny of the Ba’ath regime, significantly affecting the political situation of the Kurds in the Middle East. Most of the recent academic literature has focused on the broader picture or, in other words, the macro politics of the Kurdish conundrum within Iraq and beyond. There is little scholarship about the Kurdish population and their socio-economic conditions after 2003, and almost none about the younger generation of Kurds who came of age during autonomous Kurdish rule. This is a generation that, unlike their forebears, has no direct memory of the decades-long campaigns of repression. Studying and examining the rise of this generation of Kurdish young millennials—“Generation 2000”—who came of age in the aftermath of the United States invasion of Iraq offers a unique approach to understand the dynamics in a region that underwent a substantial socio-political transformation after 2003 as well as the impact of these developments on the youth population. Pursuing different themes and lines of inquiry the contributors of the book analyze the challenges and opportunities for young men and women to fulfil their needs and desires, and contribute to the ongoing quest for nationhood and nation-building. "In this book, our aim is to bring together a variety of perspectives from local and foreign academics who have been working on pressing issues in Kurdistan and beyond. The chapters focus on an array of themes, particularly including political participation, political situation and change, religiosity, and extremism. ... Taken together, the chapters provide us with an introduction to youth politics in Kurdistan. This book is just the first attempt to open academic and nonacademic debate on this subject at a time when protests around youth-related issues are becoming a more prevalent method of political engagement in the region. Our hope is that more research follows and supplements what has not been addressed in this book, especially through the introduction of first-hand youth perspectives to the core of this analysis and giving them a voice in nonviolent platforms." CONTENTS Foreword: Youth in the Kurdistan Region and Their Past and Present Roles - Karwan Jamal Tahir Kurdish Youth as Agents of Change: Political Participation, Looming Challenges, and Future Predictions - Shivan Fazil and Bahar Baser CHAPTER 1. Youth Political Participation and Prospects for Democratic Reform in Iraqi Kurdistan - Munir H. Mohammad CHAPTER 2. Social Media, Youth Organization, and Public Order in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Megan Connelly CHAPTER 3. Constructing Their Own Liberation: Youth’s Reimagining of Gender and Queer Sexuality in Iraqi Kurdistan - Hawzhin Azeez CHAPTER 4. Kurdish Youth and Civic Culture: Support for Democracy Among Kurdish and non-Kurdish Youth in Iraq - Dastan Jasim CHAPTER 5. Youth and Nationalism in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Sofia Barbarani CHAPTER 6. An Elitist Interpretation of KRG Governance: How Self-Serving Kurdish Elites Govern Under the Guise of Democracy and the Subsequent Implications for Representation and Change - Bamo Nouri CHAPTER 7. Educational Policy in the Kurdistan Region: A Critical Democratic Response - Abdurrahman Ahmad Wahab CHAPTER 8. Making Heaven in a Shithole: Changing Political Engagement in the Aftermath of the Islamic State - Lana Askari CHAPTER 9. Kurdish Youth and Religious Identity: Between Religious and National Tensions - Ibrahim Sadiq CHAPTER 10. Youth Radicalization in Kurdistan: The Government Response - Kamaran Palani

Download or read book Women and Gender in Iraq written by Zahra Ali and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-13 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlighting Iraqi women's voices, this is an examination of women, gender and feminisms in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion.

Download or read book The Kurdish Women s Movement written by Dilar Dirik and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2021-06-20 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kurdish women's movement is at the heart of the most exciting revolutionary experiment in the world today: Rojava. Forged over decades of struggle, most recently in the fight against ISIS, Rojava embodies a radical commitment to ecology, democracy and gender equality. But while striking images of Kurdish women in desert fatigues proliferate, a true understanding of the women's movement remains elusive.Taking apart the superficial and Orientalist frameworks that dominate, Dilar Dirik offers instead an empirically rich account of the women's movement in Kurdistan. Drawing on original research and ethnographic fieldwork, she surveys the movement's historical origins, ideological evolution, and political practice over the past forty years. Going beyond abstract ideas, Dirik locates the movement's culture and ideology in its concrete work for women's liberation and radical democracy.Taking the reader from the guerrilla mountains to radical women's academies and self-organised refugee camps, the book invites women around the world to engage with the revolution in Kurdistan, both theoretically and practically, as a vital touchstone in the wider struggle for a militant anti-fascist, anti-capitalist feminist internationalism.

Download or read book Voices That Matter written by Marlene Schäfers and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-12-23 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "'Raise your voice!' and 'Speak up!' are familiar refrains that assume, all too easily, that all who speak do so for themselves, and that doing so will lead to empowerment, healing, and reconciliation. Marlene Schäfers's Voices that Matter reveals where such assumptions fall short, demonstrating that "raising one's voice" is, in some contexts, an endeavor full of anxieties, struggles, and discontents. In its attention to the voice as form, this book examines not only what voices say, but also how they do so. By focusing on the social labor that voices carry out as they travel, vibrate, and produce sound, Schäfers shows that where new vocal practices arise, they can produce new selves and practices of social relations. Few examples bring this into relief as effectively as the Kurdish context. Written texts have existed mostly on the margins of Kurdish popular culture, whereas oral genres have a long, rich legacy. As Kurdish voices gain increasing moral and political value as metaphors of empowerment, representation, and resistance, these genres are rapidly changing. As she traces the transformations in how Kurdish women relate to and employ their voices, Schäfers illustrates that "gaining voice" is no straightforward path to liberation, especially when one's voice can be selectively appropriated in empty displays of pluralist representation"--

Download or read book Long Shot written by Azad Cudi and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Kurdish journalist who volunteered as a sniper in the fight against ISIS reveals his story in a “gripping memoir . . . elegantly told” (Publishers Weekly). In 2002, at age nineteen, Azad was conscripted into Iran’s army and forced to fight his own people. Refusing to go to war against his fellow Kurds, he deserted and smuggled himself to the United Kingdom, where he was granted asylum, became a citizen, and learned English. But in 2014, having returned to the Middle East as a social worker in the wake of the Syrian civil war, Azad found he would have to pick up a weapon once again. After twenty-one days of intensive training as a sniper, Azad became one of seventeen volunteer marksmen deployed by the Kurdish army when ISIS besieged the city of Kobani in Rojava, the newly autonomous region of the Kurds. Here, he tells the inside story of the Kurdish forces’ bloody street battles against the Islamic State. Vastly outnumbered, the Kurds would have to kill the jihadis one by one, and Azad takes us on a harrowing journey to reveal the sniper unit’s essential role in ISIS’s eventual defeat. Weaving the brutal events of war with personal and political reflection, he meditates on the incalculable price of victory—the permanent effects of war on the body and mind; the devastating death of six of his closest comrades; the loss of hundreds of volunteers in battle. But as Azad explains, these sacrifices saved not only a city but a people and their land. “A propulsive memoir that captures the grim reality of small-scale conflict and reveals the fragmented politics of the Middle East today” (Kirkus Reviews), Long Shot tells how, against all odds, a few thousand men and women achieved the impossible and kept their dream of freedom alive.

Download or read book Honour Based Violence written by Nazand Begikhani and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ’Honour'-based violence is a form of intimate violence committed against women (and some men) by husbands, fathers, brothers and male relatives. A very common social phenomenon, it has existed throughout history and in a wide variety of societies across the world, from white European to African cultures, from South and East Asia to Latin America. The most extreme form of Honour-based violence - 'honour' killing - tragically remains widespread. Over the last decade, national and international efforts, including new policy development and activist campaigns, have begun to challenge the practice. Based on a pioneering and unique study, conducted collaboratively by the Centre for Gender and Violence Research, University of Bristol, the University of Roehampton and Kurdish Women's Rights Watch, this book is at the forefront of this new and challenging policy direction.

Download or read book The Kurdish Bike written by Alesa Lightbourne and published by . This book was released on 2016-07-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Courageous teachers wanted to rebuilt war-torn nation.'With her marriage over and life gone flat, Theresa Turner responds to an online ad, and lands at a school in Kurdish Iraq. Befriended by a widow in a nearby village, Theresa is embroiled in the joys and agonies of traditional Kurds, especially the women who survived Saddam's genocide only to be crippled by age-old restrictions, brutality and honor killings. Theresa's greatest challenge will be balancing respect for cultural values while trying to introduce more enlightened attitudes toward women ? at the same time seeking new spiritual dimensions within herself.'The Kurdish Bike is gripping, tender, wry and compassionate ? an eye-opener into little-known customs in one of the world's most explosive regions ? a novel of love, betrayal and redemption.

Download or read book Voices from the Front written by N. Mater and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These riveting first-hand accounts of Turkish soldiers who have fought in the nasty internal war against the Kurds speak to universals: the shock of entering military life and the traumas of warfare; the changes in personality and relations with family and friends, the lingering emotional effects of violence, and the difficulties in returning to the 'real world', to borrow a phrase from Vietnam vets. Corruption, disillusionment and despair alternate with the small victories of humanity overcoming hellish conditions. Mater's reportage is in the best tradition of revealing the surreal, illuminating the universal truth of war's devastation. At a time when American troops are again caught in a vicious insurgency, the Kurdish issue has high visibility, and Turkey is a major actor in the Middle East, the experiences of these former soldiers resonate.