Immigrant Letters

The project “Immigrant Letters” aims to think about and discuss gender roles, inequalities and the discrimination that refugee women are exposed to via stories, poems, photographs and paintings within the public sphere where they try to exist as agents. Starting from this, it aims to go on a journey in their individual and collective memories and convey dreams and realities within the framework of fiction.

The workshop does not only focus on individual conveyence; it also focuses on fictionalizing common narratives and others’ narratives and experiencing fictionalization/writing/creating processes of a text. Tales, dreams, phantasies, individual and social realities and experiences are all taken as fiction materials. Reading, discussion, analysis, writing, fictionalization and evaluation are all arranged in a way so that they feed and ground each other.

Although themes such as gender equality, gender-based violence, gender roles, domestic and non-domestic labour, immigration and ecology are determined as the foundation and framework both in preparation materials and writing practises, these themes can be multiplied and broadened.

This workshop takes place with refugee women with intermediate and advanced level of Turkish who aim to develop their thinking and expression skills by way of writing. Each participant should primarily write in their native language. They can also write in Turkish if they prefer to do so. All written and oral exercises will be held bilingually; Turkish and Arabic. Participants may also participate in the book preparation process.

It is aimed to establish a relationship between social lives and the texts that were read, analyzed and discussed at “Immigrant Letters” at Filmmor Women’s Cooperation and fictionalize a literary text afterwards. Besides, the answers to questions such as “Why do we write?”, “”What is the purpose of writing?”, “Should it have a purpose?”, “What is writing anxiety?”, “How can it be overcome?” are sought partly by way of stories, biographies, interviews and partly by way of personal experiences through films.

Supporters:

DVV International

Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)