Female Trauma and the Pursuit of Self in Fethiye Çetin’s My Grandmother

Abstract

In 1915, the first genocide of the twentieth century was committed in the Ottoman Empire. Ever since, the Armenian Genocide has been denied by the Turkish government and excluded from Turkey’s official historiography. Contemporary Turkish society has brought about the issue of so-called “leftovers of the sword”, mostly female survivors of the genocide, who have been assimilated into Turkish society. Among the descendants of these survivors is human-right’s activist and lawyer Fethiye Çetin. This article examines cross-generational, post-genocidal trauma transmission in the exemplary case of her memoir My Grandmother. Hypothesising that trauma can be overcome by means of narrative, this article focuses on the pursuit of self in the aftermath of traumatic experience.