Identity and Writing: the Case of Eastern Sephardic Women

Abstract

Access to written culture, which began to be widespread among Sephardic women in the former Ottoman Empire at the end of the nineteenth century, opens a new perspective in gender studies of the Jewish minority in Muslim societies. Writing constitutes one of the main vehicles through which individuals appropriate their own identity and culture. In this sense, female Eastern Sephardic writers represent a fascinating example of how a cultural minority elaborates its consciousness and the awareness of its past. This article deals with this specific issue: the way that both the first Sephardic female writers and those who followed were able to elaborate a new identity through the act of writing and the awareness of its multiple possibilities. The first Sephardic female writers (Reina Hakohén, Rosa Gabay and Laura Papo) show us their contradictions: the identification with the traditional roles of women, the continuous justifications of their work as writers, the redefinition of what means to be a female writer in the context of Eastern Sephardic societies.