Author(s): Fethi DEMÄ°R
Tragic events in Dersim during 1938, as well as they are a social, cultural, political, and research subject, are reflected in literature and art. Writers in different world views, literary intellects and styles attempt to narrate this painful process artistically. Especially in the 1970s, the vast majority of the novels referring to Dersim tragedy are the political and socialist-realist narratives. In the novels in which the foremost concern of the writer is giving political message, the basic elements of the art of fiction such as characters, the narrator, and the style are not paid much attention. Another example of the novels about Dersim tragedy is the modern novels in the avant-garde examples appearing as of the years of 2000. Among the these modern novels, one of the most important one is Sema Kaygusuz's Yüzünde Bir Yer. In her novel based on her grandmother’s life, Kaygusuz blends a Dersim-exiled grandmother’s pains, exiles and tragedies left to her grandson, using folk legends, mythological elements and religious figures, and consequently, a colorful, eclectic, plural, and partial atmosphere of narrative emerges. Kaygusuz, without engaging in any political discourse, only tries to see the trauma in the individual’s inner world caused by carnage, death and exile from a perspective of historical, religious, cultural and folkloric background. Kaygusuz, successfully using inner monologue and internal dialogue of the modern narrative techniques, both decodes the tides in the protagonist's inner world using “Second Person Narrative” , and intends to break the taboos about the Dersim tragedy by directly calling at the reader. She therefore problematizes the ongoing memory about the Dersim tragedy and succeeds in creating a narrative which emphasizes universal human situations, is clear of anger and hatred, depicts people without agitating their sufferings, and appeals to conscientiously and common sensibilities.
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