Turkish-Cypriot Literature
North Cyprus  
 


  Kitap - Cyprus Book Review 2006
   May Review / Mayıs Kitabı - 2006
  Cockburn, Cynthia, (2004), "The Line: Women, Partition and the Gender Order in Cyprus", Zed Books, ISBN 1842774204.
   
  Cockburn, Cynthia, (2004), "The Line: Women, Partition and the Gender Order in Cyprus", Zed Books, ISBN 1842774204.Feminist academic Cynthia Cockburn's latest book, The Line, charts the activism of a unique women's group - Hands Across the Divide - the first to embrace women from both north and south Cyprus. She joins Martha to discuss the issues, along with Sevgül Uludağ, founding member of Hands Across the Divide and Maria Spyrou, chair of the Greek-Cypriot Women's Association in London.

Book Description

With Cyprus' entry into the European Union in 2004, the pressure is on to resolve the long-standing partition between the internationally accepted Greek-Cypriot Republic of Cyprus and the still unrecognized Turkish-Cypriot Republic of North Cyprus.

"Hat", the Turkish
translation of Cynthia
Cockburn's book.

Cypriot women on both sides of the Green Line have been involved in a remarkable bi-communal initiative, largely using the internet, aimed at overcoming both communal segregation and the subordinate position of women. Their activities -as documented and contextualized in this book-add, for the first time, a gender dimension into our understanding of the split between the two communities.

Cynthia Cockburn shows the effects of the Green Line on the lives and imaginations of those separated by it. She explores the parallels between gender hierarchy and political power relations, and her powerful photographs help bring to life the courage and initiative of the women involved.

   
  Reviews
  "Cynthia Cockburn writes with clarity and passion about a remarkable movement. Out of a history of violence and hatred come imaginative moves for reconciliation, and new ideas about equality and identity. This is a vivid and thoughtful book, relevant to men as well as women, and useful to all concerned about ethnic division and political violence anywhere in the world."

-R.W.Connell, author of Gender and Professor of Education, University of Sydney   

   
  "This is it! In this terrific book Cynthia Cockburn has shown us all how to take an allegedly 'messy' and 'ancient' inter-ethnic, internationalized conflict and reveal instead the very particular ways in which the politics of masculinity and femininity have been wielded to entrench that conflict. She does this by taking seriously the hard work of thinking and action done by Cypriot feminists. I can't wait to use this The Line in classes. It's pathbreaking."

-Cynthia Enloe, author of Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives 

   
 

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