In 1994 Krista Bremer was a 20-something Pacific coast surfer headed for a comfortable, if shallow and materialistic, future. She would marry a man with a perfect Southern California beach body. All that changed when she moved to Chapel Hill, NC to begin graduate school and fell in love with fellow runner Ismail--“an older, darker, poorer man” with a thick accent and tiny apartment who did not begin to match the mate she imagined for herself:
“For as long as I could remember, I had understood life to be a game of acquisition, much like the board game I had loved to play as a child. The key to winning the game of Life was to start with a college education, because it meant receiving a bigger fistful of colorful bills each payday I passed on my way to the finish line. The next step, after a short bend in the road, was to get married: to add a little blue peg beside my pink one in the front seat of a car whose backseat allowed up to four children. Each passing year would bring more: a starter home, twins, a pay raise, a family cruise vacation. I would spin the wheel of chance and count my steps forward, and my life would progress as an unbroken series of expanding opportunities. At the end of the game, when I reached retirement, I would reside at Millionaire Estates or Countryside Acres—each of which had its own distinct appeal. Then it was time to count the money. The one with the most cash always wins.” (pp. 16-17)
This memoir recounts Krista’s experiences entering marriage and creating a cross-cultural family with a Muslim (one of 13 children born in his family, 8 of whom survived) from a poor fishing village in Muammar Gaddafi’s oppressive Libya. With forthright candor, Krista recounts their conflicts and challenges as she and Ismail try to blend strikingly different values and lifestyles.
The most compelling part of the memoir traces Krista and Ismail’s first visit to Libya. Krista knows little about the customs, culture, and language of Ismail’s homeland. She doesn’t realize she can’t go out for a morning run without a male escort. She doesn’t realize that family social gatherings last all day and no one speaks English. She cannot conceive of women who are “confined mostly to their homes and subject to the wills of their husbands” for most of their lives. (pp. 184-185). But as Krista begins to gradually adjust to a slower pace of life, she begins to appreciate many of the virtues of these Libyan women:
“…I ached for the intimacy they shared, for their selfless generosity, for their abiding faith and the slow pace of their daily lives, devoid of my typically American concerns: balancing career and family, saving for retirement, trying to stay fit and thin. They would never experience the freedoms I enjoyed but neither would they have to correspond with their closest email from thousands of miles away. They would never negotiate eight weeks of leave with a boss who viewed that arrangement as generous or leave their tiny babies with a stranger for eight hours while they sat in an office across town. They would never worry that the lines of their face made them less marketable in a tough economy. They would never know the persistent sense of failure or the creeping despair that comes from doggedly chasing the elusive dream that women can be everything at once: sexy and youthful, independent and financially successful, extraordinary mothers and wives.” (p. 185)
In another fascinating part of the memoir Krista faces the consequences of raising a daughter in two cultures and allowing her to choose her own identity. “Smug” in her confidence that Aliya will choose her mother’s more comfortable American lifestyle over her father’s modest Muslim ways, Krista is shocked when her daughter asks to wear a hijab at the age of 9. Realizing the differences between herself growing up in California where it was liberating to wear a bikini and her daughter, who finds liberation in covering herself, she writes:
…I imagined that head scarf having magical powers to protect her boundless imagination, her keen perception, and her unself-conscious goodness. I imagined it shielding her on her journey through adolescence, that house of mirrors where so many young women get trapped. I imagined her scarf buffering her form the restless and insecurity that clings to us in spite of the growing number of choices at our fingertips; I imagined it providing safe cover as she took flight into a future I could only imagine.” (p. 228)
Krista Bergen writes lyrically and insightfully about her experiences learning to live with and appreciate the individual, cultural, and religious differences between her husband and herself. These are issues that could have easily dissolved a marriage; through mutual respect, understanding, patience and love their relationship has lasted (but hit more than a few bumpy roads)
Although this memoir is interesting and beautifully written, it left me with many unanswered questions. As I read, questions kept popping into my head that were never fully answered: How did Ismail make it into a doctoral program at a prestigious American university from a poor fishing village in Libya? How did Bremer’s family react to her marrying a Muslim? And how did Ismail’s family react to him marrying a non-Muslim American? Did Ismail and Krista discuss their religious and cultural differences and how they would might affect their future before they decided to marry? Why didn’t Ismail better prepare his wife for the culture shock she was going to inevitably experience visiting Lybia?
I agree with New York Times Reviewer Pamela Druckerman who writes that the memoir lacks vital “connective tissue” that would have strengthened Krista’s story by not leaving so many unanswered questions dangling in the minds of readers (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/boo...).
“For as long as I could remember, I had understood life to be a game of acquisition, much like the board game I had loved to play as a child. The key to winning the game of Life was to start with a college education, because it meant receiving a bigger fistful of colorful bills each payday I passed on my way to the finish line. The next step, after a short bend in the road, was to get married: to add a little blue peg beside my pink one in the front seat of a car whose backseat allowed up to four children. Each passing year would bring more: a starter home, twins, a pay raise, a family cruise vacation. I would spin the wheel of chance and count my steps forward, and my life would progress as an unbroken series of expanding opportunities. At the end of the game, when I reached retirement, I would reside at Millionaire Estates or Countryside Acres—each of which had its own distinct appeal. Then it was time to count the money. The one with the most cash always wins.” (pp. 16-17)
This memoir recounts Krista’s experiences entering marriage and creating a cross-cultural family with a Muslim (one of 13 children born in his family, 8 of whom survived) from a poor fishing village in Muammar Gaddafi’s oppressive Libya. With forthright candor, Krista recounts their conflicts and challenges as she and Ismail try to blend strikingly different values and lifestyles.
The most compelling part of the memoir traces Krista and Ismail’s first visit to Libya. Krista knows little about the customs, culture, and language of Ismail’s homeland. She doesn’t realize she can’t go out for a morning run without a male escort. She doesn’t realize that family social gatherings last all day and no one speaks English. She cannot conceive of women who are “confined mostly to their homes and subject to the wills of their husbands” for most of their lives. (pp. 184-185). But as Krista begins to gradually adjust to a slower pace of life, she begins to appreciate many of the virtues of these Libyan women:
“…I ached for the intimacy they shared, for their selfless generosity, for their abiding faith and the slow pace of their daily lives, devoid of my typically American concerns: balancing career and family, saving for retirement, trying to stay fit and thin. They would never experience the freedoms I enjoyed but neither would they have to correspond with their closest email from thousands of miles away. They would never negotiate eight weeks of leave with a boss who viewed that arrangement as generous or leave their tiny babies with a stranger for eight hours while they sat in an office across town. They would never worry that the lines of their face made them less marketable in a tough economy. They would never know the persistent sense of failure or the creeping despair that comes from doggedly chasing the elusive dream that women can be everything at once: sexy and youthful, independent and financially successful, extraordinary mothers and wives.” (p. 185)
In another fascinating part of the memoir Krista faces the consequences of raising a daughter in two cultures and allowing her to choose her own identity. “Smug” in her confidence that Aliya will choose her mother’s more comfortable American lifestyle over her father’s modest Muslim ways, Krista is shocked when her daughter asks to wear a hijab at the age of 9. Realizing the differences between herself growing up in California where it was liberating to wear a bikini and her daughter, who finds liberation in covering herself, she writes:
…I imagined that head scarf having magical powers to protect her boundless imagination, her keen perception, and her unself-conscious goodness. I imagined it shielding her on her journey through adolescence, that house of mirrors where so many young women get trapped. I imagined her scarf buffering her form the restless and insecurity that clings to us in spite of the growing number of choices at our fingertips; I imagined it providing safe cover as she took flight into a future I could only imagine.” (p. 228)
Krista Bergen writes lyrically and insightfully about her experiences learning to live with and appreciate the individual, cultural, and religious differences between her husband and herself. These are issues that could have easily dissolved a marriage; through mutual respect, understanding, patience and love their relationship has lasted (but hit more than a few bumpy roads)
Although this memoir is interesting and beautifully written, it left me with many unanswered questions. As I read, questions kept popping into my head that were never fully answered: How did Ismail make it into a doctoral program at a prestigious American university from a poor fishing village in Libya? How did Bremer’s family react to her marrying a Muslim? And how did Ismail’s family react to him marrying a non-Muslim American? Did Ismail and Krista discuss their religious and cultural differences and how they would might affect their future before they decided to marry? Why didn’t Ismail better prepare his wife for the culture shock she was going to inevitably experience visiting Lybia?
I agree with New York Times Reviewer Pamela Druckerman who writes that the memoir lacks vital “connective tissue” that would have strengthened Krista’s story by not leaving so many unanswered questions dangling in the minds of readers (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/boo...).