INTERVIEW: Suzy Hansen on viewing America from Turkey

Over 10 years in Turkey, journalist Suzy Hansen has produced an impressive series of long, deeply reported explorations of various tough issues.

In "Notes on a Foreign Country," she turns her attention to her home country. The book (reviewed in HDN here) examines the dark side of U.S. engagement in the world, giving a searing critique of American amnesia and the belief in the "inherent goodness" of the U.S.

Hansen spoke to the Hürriyet Daily News about her book and 10 years of reporting from Turkey. 

 
This is your first book and it has been getting quite a bit of attention. What has the whole process of writing and publishing the book been like?

I'm very happy with the response. Most of the reviews have understood the intention of the book, which was mainly to explore what it means to be abroad as an American in the 20th century. What do you learn when you are living abroad? What does it tell you about your own country? What are the weaknesses and prejudices you discover when you're attempting to understand foreign countries? Americans have a unique problem in seeing the rest of the world clearly because we're invested in the idea of our own exceptionalism and the idea that the rest of the world wants to be like us. It's a deeply unconscious assumption that even the most well-intentioned and self-critical thinker may have. 

A few people have been a little offended by the book, saying "America has done good things too, can't we acknowledge that?" But because this is such a time of confusion in the U.S., for the most part people are open to critique, self-critique and understanding American identity in different ways.

The book opens in Soma, the small town in western Turkey and the...