Speaking of Beki Luiza Bahar: A Jewish Woman Playwright in Turkey & Negotiating an Ambiguous Identity in the Public Sphere

Abstract

This article focuses on Beki Luiza Bahar, the first published Turkish-Jewish woman playwright. Her oeuvre includes prose, poetry, memoir and a wide spectrum of fictional and non-fictional works. To better grasp the author’s writing praxis and prove how the merging of fiction, biography, and autobiography allows her to manage the contradictory elements of her identity, the study uses an inter-textual approach relying on both fictional and non-fictional works by the author. Beki Luiza Bahar’s works highlight how understanding, remembering, and speaking of one’s past are interwoven with selfhood and recognition in her opinion. The present analysis moves back and forth between these ideas, attempting to understand how she negotiates her minority subjectivity while writing.

Keywords

• Beki Luiza Bahar
• Jewish woman playwright
• biographical drama
• minority subjectivity
• identity

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