Ayşegül Yayla

I came across a book couple of weeks ago through a colleague. It was The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. I was eager to learn more about the communication challenges of international people with pretty different backgrounds working together because I am working at such an office in the Netherlands. I read the book quickly and got so fascinated that I even asked my team lead to add it as a pre-requisite for the future employees. Next thing I saw was that she was ordering the book o

While visiting New York City in late October 2018 for my dad’s 60th birthday, we went up one of the skyscrapers of Manhattan, like a good tourist, to take a look at the concrete jungle for inspiration. Actually the whole city was almost demanding attention from every corner and I felt like I had do it good for a memorable experience of the Big Apple with an Empire state of mind. Despite having grown up in Istanbul and being used to the historical monuments, colorful daily lif

The below section is taken from the Introduction of my MA thesis From Double to Mestiza Consciousness as a part of the Research Master Study of Art and Literature program at the Leiden University. Identity politics require the presence of a marginalized Other. Marginalization occurs when a group of people is disadvantaged based on single or multiple constructed inequalities in a social context. This study is concentrated on the African-American and Mexican-American experience

Bell hooks’ Yearning is a call for the general public to re-conceptualize black cultural identities. She is concerned with transforming the oppressive structures present in the context of white supremacy. Her main target is media which reproduce stereotypes of blackness. She criticizes the consumption of these commodified images by public and urges her readers to join the creation of a “liberatory space to construct radical black subjectivity” (36) in order to attain awarenes