Bu çalışma, Türk ve Amerikan edebiyatında bir “kesişme” olasılığını, ulusal edebiyatın uluslararasılaşması olarak değil, çiftkültürlü metinleri inceleyerek araştırmaktadır. Makalede, Türk Amerikan edebiyatındaki “Amerikan” çerçevesi özellikle bu kesişmenin açıkça belli olduğu üç yazar ile ele alınacaktır: ilki büyük ölçüde Türk Amerikan edebiyatının birleşiminin başlangıcı olarak kabul edilen Halide Edip’in yapıtı; ikincisi Alev Lytle Croutier’in yapıtında Türkiye’deki Amerikalılaşma algısı; üçüncüsü de Elif Şafak’ın 2010’da yayınlanan Aşk romanındaki melez yazarlık sorunudur. Üç metin incelemesi, Türk Amerikan romanlarının Amerikan edebiyat ve kültür gelenekleriyle nasıl sürekli bir diyalog içinde olduğunu göstermeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu üçlü yaklaşım, Türk Amerikan edebiyatını Birleşik Devletlerle olan ilişkinin yeni sömürge endişeleri tarafından biçimlendirildiği başlangıç aşamasından, daha yakın zamanda görülen uzlaşı estetiğine kadar tartışmaya çalışacaktır. Böylece, Türk Amerikan edebiyatının, Rebecca Walkowitz'in savunduğu gibi "yazarın geçmişinden çok kitabın geleceğine" bağlı olduğunun altı çizilecektir

An Implausible Juncture? Locating the Turkish Novel in an American Frame, from Neocolonial Anxiety to the ‘Threshold Novel’

My study investigates the possibility of a “juncture” between the Turkish and the American in a body of texts that do not simply represent another instance of national literature gone international, but a successful case of bi-cultural literature. The following paper will strengthen the ‘American’ frame around Turkish American literature by presenting three areas in which the “juncture” is particularly evident: first, the work of Halide Edip as the origin of the juncture and of Turkish American literature at large; second, the perception of Americanization in Turkey in the work ofAlev Lytle Croutier; third, the issue of hybrid authorship in Elif Shafak´s 2010 novel The Forty Rules of Love.These three fields of analysis aim to show how Turkish American novels engage in a constant dialogue with the American literary and cultural tradition. This tripartite approach attempts to delineate a trajectory of Turkish American literature from an initial stage, where the view of the relationship with the United States is dominated by neocolonial anxieties, to more recent aesthetics of reconciliation. Through this discussion I hope to portray, perhaps provocatively, that Turkish American literature, as Rebecca Walkowitz has argued depends “more on a book’s future than on a writer’s past.”

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