Idgie Says:
A carefully and emotionally told story of falling into a life not expected........and embracing it. This is a true story of Krista's life. She was a floater - no set goals - so I when her husband fell into her life she went along for the ride. She shows confusion and trepidation, but continues on to see what happens... and sometimes that's the way life goes - you don't create a dam or structure the river, you simply get on a raft and see where it takes you.
A good story.
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My Accidental Jihad
Krista Bremer
Hardcover: 304 pagesPublisher: Algonquin Books (April 22, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1616200685
ISBN-13: 978-1616200688
Fifteen years ago, Krista Bremer would not have been able to imagine her
life today: married to a Libyan-born Muslim, raising two children with
Arabic names in the American South. Nor could she have imagined the
prejudice she would encounter or the profound ways her marriage would
change her perception of the world.
But on a running trail in North Carolina, she met Ismail. He was passionate and sincere—and he loved adventure as much as she did. From acquaintances to lovers to a couple facing an unexpected pregnancy, this is the story of two people—a middle-class American raised in California and a Muslim raised by illiterate parents in an impoverished Libyan fishing village—who made a commitment to each other without forsaking their own identities.
It is the story of a bicultural marriage—and aren’t all marriages bicultural? In any marriage, we might discover that our mate is foreign to us, with very different language, memories, and assumptions about home and family. How we respond to difference shapes our world.
Profoundly moving and often funny, this meditation on tolerance explores what it means to open our hearts to another culture and to embrace our own. It is Krista Bremer’s unexpected struggle to reach beyond herself, her accidental Jihad.
But on a running trail in North Carolina, she met Ismail. He was passionate and sincere—and he loved adventure as much as she did. From acquaintances to lovers to a couple facing an unexpected pregnancy, this is the story of two people—a middle-class American raised in California and a Muslim raised by illiterate parents in an impoverished Libyan fishing village—who made a commitment to each other without forsaking their own identities.
It is the story of a bicultural marriage—and aren’t all marriages bicultural? In any marriage, we might discover that our mate is foreign to us, with very different language, memories, and assumptions about home and family. How we respond to difference shapes our world.
Profoundly moving and often funny, this meditation on tolerance explores what it means to open our hearts to another culture and to embrace our own. It is Krista Bremer’s unexpected struggle to reach beyond herself, her accidental Jihad.