Book Review and Reflections on the Kurdish Movement on the occasion of the Book by Gurbetelli Ersöz: I Embroidered My Heart in the Mountains. The Diary of a Kurdish Woman Guerrilla, 1995–1997

Abstract

This article offers a critical review of the book by Gurbetelli Ersöz, I Embroidered My Heart in the Mountains.
The Diary of a Kurdish Woman Guerrilla, 1995–1997. The book is expected to receive largely positive readings,
particularly in a country such as Greece, where a broad audience—spanning almost horizontally across the
political spectrum from left to right—has historically identified with the cause of the Kurdish people’s
struggle. The article seeks to take the reading of the book one step further by situating Ersöz’s diary within
the broader spatio-temporal context of the Kurdish question and the history of the Kurdish movement. In
this context, it highlights the centrality of the critique of patriarchy as it takes shape through the movement’s
historical development (as reflected in Ersöz’s book) and examines the remnants of patriarchy in the present.