Swaying: essays on intercultural love

Abstract

In a world that is becoming increasingly small, where people frequently study, work, and live in cultures other than their own, it is not surprising that many people also make romantic commitments across cultural lines. This engaging anthology of literary non-fiction celebrates the creative potential of choosing diversity and explores in many voices the real-life social, cultural, and spiritual consequences of this choice. It is not a dry study that seeks to label and categorize intercultural relationships, nor is it a collection of fiction that seeks to create a dramatic backdrop for conflict or romance. These are the honest voices of women who have made commitments across national and cultural lines, who have moved toward the revitalizing and educating potential of such partnerships. The fifteen essays in this book, by women of different cultural and national backgrounds, are arranged as a narrative, with three sections reflecting the development of romantic relationships: first, courtship, commitment, and the discovery, celebration, and negotiation of differences; second, integrating marriage ceremonies, understanding and appreciating in-laws, and merging spiritual beliefs and lifestyles; and, finally, the long-term results and effects of intercultural partnerships. Intercultural couples struggle, quite often successfully, with the kinds of questions anyone who wants to live responsibly in a multicultural world must raise. They live, as we must all learn to do, in a place where multiple cultures find expression. These couples find themselves choosing not to choose between their cultures of origin; instead they move among cultures, between struggle and harmony, accepting what they canand negotiating what they cannot.