Women’s autobiography tradition offers a rich ground to explore the diversity in the reception of the nation-building process and modernization project of the Turkish Republic. This papers seeks to present an overview of this diversity, focusing on Emine Esenbel’s One Thousand Colors, One Life: Memories of an Ambassadress as an ambiguous voice among its contemporaries. Modernization project of the Republic that granted women certain rights and assigned roles such as protecting and consolidating the Republican values and raising ideal individuals as mothers were internalized by many women autobiography writers such as Mina Urgan, Muhibbe Draga, Nermin Abadan-Unat, and Mualla Eyuboglu. Also, this period was referred to as the “golden age” of women’s rights by these women. These elite intellectual women consider the Republic as a turning point in their lives, emphasizing their gratefulness to Ataturk, founder of the Republic, and his reforms in their autobiographies. However, submission to the responsibilities accorded to women was not uncontested, nor the efficiency of the reforms unquestioned. It is also possible to hear voices in some of the life stories directly opposing the modernization project or showing a critical attitude towards unfair and inadequate reforms regarding women’s place in public life such as Esenbel’s autobiography. As an elite Turkish woman chosen to realize the Republican ideals, Esenbel willfully assumes responsibility; however, she cannot conceal her contentions against this given identity and dissatisfaction with the still minoritized position of women in social life, contradicting the arguments of gender equality in other women’s autobiographies from the same period. Curiously, she negotiates her frustration with the modernization project by embracing her rather traditional role as the supportive wife of an important man in the name of serving the Republic. This ambivalent position between the modern and the traditional/patriarchal values casts a unique light on the reception of the modernization project by women.