The Street of the Cauldron Makers
Series: Worlds of Difference
From: Homelands Productions
Length: 00:13:25
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Piece Description
Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, who was prosecuted and acquitted in 2006 for "insulting Turkishness" in her novel The Bastard of Istanbul, takes us on a tour of the steep, narrow street where she once lived and wrote. Shafak sees Kazanci Yokushu, the "Street of the Cauldron Makers," as a metaphor for Turkey's modern history -- a place where the nation's battles over identity, modernity, ethnicity and minority rights have played out in miniature over the decades. The piece was produced by Sandy Tolan with help from Melissa Robbins.
Broadcast History
First broadcast on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, October 2005
Timing and Cues
INTRO: Turkey emerged in the 1920s as a new nation, fundamentally different from the old Ottoman empire. Modern Turkey would be secular and western; it's people would look forward, rarely back. Unearthing Turkey's buried memories is a central theme in the work of novelist Elif Shafak [eh-LEEF sha-FAHK]. In this story, part of the documentary series Worlds of Difference, Shafak finds her nation's modern history on a shabby, non-descript street in Istanbul, where she once lived and worked.
OUTRO: That was Elif Shafak in Istanbul. Her piece was produced by Sandy Tolan and Melissa Robbins of Homelands Productions. For more information, visit www.homelands.org.
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John Biewen
Posted on July 15, 2007 at 07:56 AM | Permalink
Review of The Street of the Cauldron Makers
A superb piece ostensibly about a single street in Istanbul, but of course about much much more: cultural identity and government's attempts to control it; ethnic "cleansing"; historical memory and forgetting. Elif Shafak's voice is almost as captivating as her observations, memories and metaphors. "Our conversation with the past has been broken, but our history, our stories, lie here, in the layers just beneath our feet." The writer's musings are interwined with sounds and voices (human and feline) of the "Street of the Cauldron Makers." A moving combination travelogue and radio essay, infused with historical complexity, flawlessly produced.