“Each race in its proper sphere”: understanding Ottoman nation, race, and class in the travel narratives of Demetra Vaka Brown (1877–1946) and Leila Ahmed (1940–)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the lives and travel writings of two post-Ottoman women writers, Demetra Vaka Brown (1877–1946), a former Ottoman Greek who immigrated to the United States in the late nineteenth century, and Leila Ahmed (1940–), an Egyptian-American scholar whose family was of Turko-Circassian origins. While Vaka Brown's The Unveiled Ladies of Stamboul (1923) is a post-World War I memoir that nostalgically reminisces on the Ottoman era, Ahmed's A Border Passage (1999) examines the political twists and turns in twentieth-century Egypt, and their implications for Ahmed's family. Both women grapple with their Ottoman heritage, exploring constructions of gender as they intersect with Ottoman religious beliefs, class strata, and post-Ottoman nationalisms.