Spotlight on Judy Light Ayyildiz, BA 1963

Judy Light Ayyildiz feels that if you can’t find something you need, chances are other people need it to. This was the incentive behind her ninth book, Some of My Ancestors Are Ottomans and Turks, a full-color book targeted for middle school.

Ayyildiz, who has been married to U.S.-naturalized Turkish-American citizen Dr. Vedii Ayyildiz for 44 years, was in Istanbul several years ago shopping for a book about Turkish heritage for her grandson. “There were none available,” said Ayyildiz. “So I came home and wrote this book about how the Turks got from the Asian Steppe into Europe and evolved into the modern Turkish Republic. Later when I was asked to make a presentation to a large group of Turks at the New York consulate on another matter, I was asked if I had written anything for Turkish children. I showed them the book and they not only loved it, but insisted they needed a book like this for their Saturday Turkish classes. I asked my husband to illustrate the text of the book and my daughter to design it.”

The Ayyildiz family started their own press and sold to the Turkish schools in the United States with remarkable success. Last year she went back to Istanbul to the Greenhouse Bookstore to see if they would carry her book. “They not only said yes,” said Ayyildiz, “but wanted to publish it. They have since asked me to write a second book in the series with my husband as illustrator. This new book will focus on the republic and its founder, Ataturk, and the remarkable and progressive rights he gave to women and his insistence on their being equal.”

This is not the first time Ayyildiz felt the need to write about something near to her heart. One day in 1985 she woke up paralyzed from the waste down. “I was soon to be diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder where the immune system gets confused and begins to attack itself,” said Ayyildiz. I was told that nothing but time and physical therapy could help. I used this time to reflect on my life – my days at Marshall, how I met my husband and the challenges of our cultural and religious differences, how our relationship caused my own father to disown me. I had met my future husband when I was a senior at Marshall and he was a surgical resident at the VA Hospital nearby.” This review of her life lead to the poignant – and entertaining – Nothing But Time: A Woman’s Struggle with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, published in 2000.

In spite of some personally emotional times while at Marshall, Ayyildiz enjoyed being educated in her “first” career, music. This teaching career may not have happened were it not for one of her mentors, supervisor Janet Chandler at Huntington East High School. “When I was doing my student teaching,” said Ayyildiz, “I was not only married but pregnant. At that time it was illegal for a woman to teach in West Virginia if pregnant. Using mind over matter I managed to hide my afternoon queasiness. The day I got my degree I went back to tell Janet the truth, and as it turns out, she already knew. She chose not to tell. This was one of the nicest things anyone ever did for me. And to those young women reading this, it lets you know how things used to be, and how they have changed.” Ayyildiz would go on to earn a master’s degree from the Hollins University Creative Writing program.

Ayyildiz sustained some permanent damage from the Guillain-Barré, but yoga and a lot of meditation helped in the recovery. In addition to her books of poetry, her three textbooks for middle school, and the book in progress in Istanbul, she has a tenth book, the novel Wife of the Revolution, with her agent now. The book is based on the life of her mother-in-law who was active in women’s rights in Turkey.

As well as writing and teaching, Ayyildiz makes presentations on topics varying from creative writing to women’s rights. In April 2006 she presented “Women in Historical Literature” at the Second International Conference on Women's Studies, "Breaking the Glass Ceiling" at Eastern Mediterranean University Center for Women's Studies in Famagusta, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. She discussed the process of writing her novel and what made her mother-in-law heroic. In June 2006 she will speak again on creating a novel at Ege University of Women's Studies Cultural Conference in Izmir, Turkey.

Judy and Vedii Ayyildiz live in Roanke, Va., and now have two grandchildren. For more about Judy’s career, please visit http://www.judylightayyildiz.com.