Kemalettin Tuğcu's children's books, which once reached broad audiences and continue to be published today, have been heavily criticized for their contents, which seriously offend sensibilities about equality and social justice. The books include themes of discrimination, violations of rights, imbalances of power, ill-treatment, humiliation, and persecution, reconstructing these facts through their contents. The characters in the fiction are polarized in binary extremes such as rich-poor, city-dweller-villager, educated-uneducated, adult-child, biological child-adopted child, parented-orphan, unhandicapped-handicapped, married-single/divorced/widow, male-female. One side of the equation represents the normal, strong and superior position, while the other side is labeled as non-normative, weak and low, on whom sanctions are imposed without question. In such an equation, the oppressed characters are openly exposed to all kinds of severe insults, slander, violence and bullying, while those defined as strong are fictionalized as the perpetrators of all kinds of violence. In these books, which can be thought of as the repetition of each other on the basis of theme, the weaker side slowly recovers over time, starts to earn money, someone donates property to them, adopts them or takes care of them; the wicked are sometimes punished directly and sometimes indirectly, or the disasters that befall them are interpreted as the result of the evil they have done. In the books, gender roles and all manner of related cliches are taken as premise. In some instances, these cliches are presented as integrated with the fiction in an entirely normalizing tone, while in other examples, exaggerated discourses are used. Although these cliches may be seen as a reflection of the mentality of the period when the books were written, the fact that books still reach child readers undermines efforts made to question patriarchy and promote gender equality today. In this study, 50 children’s books republished by Damla Publishing under the name Kemalettin Tuğcu Series (2019) are analyzed based on a feminist reading within the framework of literary theory and evaluated within the scope of reinforcement and reproduction of gender roles and related concepts through children's literature.
Primary Language | Turkish |
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Subjects | Literary Theory |
Journal Section | Research Articles |
Authors | |
Publication Date | December 30, 2021 |
Submission Date | November 10, 2021 |
Published in Issue | Year 2021 Volume: 2 Issue: 2 |