Review by Choice Review
These powerful essays treat international couples and the challenges they face while navigating between two often vastly different cultures. The essays strive to fill a gap between anecdotal information and empirical sociological research. The editors have sought to present the social, cultural, and spiritual concerns that accompany intercultural relationships. Although the articles focus on gender issues, the reader is encouraged to look beyond the obvious and to realize that these are entangled with issues of cultural and personal history. The first part of the collection examines the early phases of a couple's commitment, and how personal attraction develops between two people of differing cultures. The second section includes the wider circle of family: children, other relatives, and family history. The third section ties the essays together, yet does not offer neat and tidy explanations. Intercultural stressors pose seemingly irreconcilable problems. Contributors have sought solutions through self-examination, but have discovered many more questions than answers. As intercultural relationships continue to increase, the need to explore the challenges to such relationships grows. This volume is a significant step toward that goal. All levels. R.C. Myers Central Washington University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
This book is designed "to do two things at once: acknowledge the sometimes anguishingly difficult, sometimes unsolvable, dilemmas of intercultural couples and celebrate the creative solutions that many couples find." In addition to relatively familiar voices like those of Ruth Prawer-Jhabvala, Le Ly Hayslip, and poet Judith Ortiz Cofer, the book includes essays by Christi Merrill, Mary Hanford, Elizabeth Martinez, Faith Eidse, Fern Kupfer, Catherine Casale, Lita Page, JoAnn Hansen Rasch, Nora Egan, Susan Tiberghien, and both editors. There are wonderful titles here, like "Voodoo Faust" and "Another Traditional Arab-Jewish Iowa Potluck." The authors describe relationships across ethnic and cultural and sometimes (though not always) religious and racial lines. The editors had planned to include male and female authors and gay/lesbian as well as straight relationships, but the submissions and suggestions they received produced an all-female, all-heterosexual collection. (Reviewed December 15, 1995)0877455260Mary Carroll
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
