![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Needs not distraction, but what the heck
Nov. 26th, 2014 01:52 pmSo I fire up my Kindle to check something and Kindle saw fit to introduce me to:
Three Daughters: A Novel by Consuelo Saah Baehr, of which the description goes:
Born in rural Palestine, just before the dawn of the twentieth century, Miriam adores her father and is certain his love will protect her, but she soon finds that tradition overrides love. Uprooted by war, Miriam enters a world where the old constraints slip away with thrilling and disastrous results. Miriam’s rebellious daughter, Nadia, is thrilled with the opportunity for a modern life that her elite education provides. But when she falls in love with an outsider, the clan reins her back with a shocking finality. Nijmeh, Nadia's daughter, is an only child and the path her father, the sheik, sets for her is fraught with difficulties, yet it prepares her for her ultimate journey to America, where she finds her future.
^____^;
Anyone else feels like they've read this book before?
Of course, it's gotta be America, y'know? You can't get your future anywhere else. The path of going against tradition, of pre-marital relationships, rebellion, falling in love, and teen angst has to ultimately end in the land of Mickey Mouse and Starbucks. Yup.
This is not America-bashing.
This is not an endorsement of the novel. (But also not a condemnation - read whatever you want.)
But this description is hilarious. I've not read this novel, but I enjoy, in a purely unironic way, of how similar it seems to be those Wild Swans-ish narratives, except it has sheiks, apparently: y'know, oppression by government and tradition in your homeland, breaking free, escape/journey to America, yay to individualism and acceptance forever and ever. Yeaaaah. It is, as they say in fandom, nice fic. The really weird thing about these sort of narratives is how unironic the authors seem to regard the US as this ultimate life goal and font of good capitalism. Then again, I guess if you're escaping Oppression and Evil Dictators, there isn't that much time for navel-gazing.
By the way, has anyone else noticed that once these heroes/heroines make their way to the US, they don't go anywhere else? It's kind of a downer. Just think, you get through evil customs and jump through immigration hoops, you get citizenship and then, wham, condemned to Picket Fences, USA, forever. It's fine for RL hopefuls but this is fiction: we need more car chases.
Three Daughters: A Novel by Consuelo Saah Baehr, of which the description goes:
Born in rural Palestine, just before the dawn of the twentieth century, Miriam adores her father and is certain his love will protect her, but she soon finds that tradition overrides love. Uprooted by war, Miriam enters a world where the old constraints slip away with thrilling and disastrous results. Miriam’s rebellious daughter, Nadia, is thrilled with the opportunity for a modern life that her elite education provides. But when she falls in love with an outsider, the clan reins her back with a shocking finality. Nijmeh, Nadia's daughter, is an only child and the path her father, the sheik, sets for her is fraught with difficulties, yet it prepares her for her ultimate journey to America, where she finds her future.
^____^;
Anyone else feels like they've read this book before?
Of course, it's gotta be America, y'know? You can't get your future anywhere else. The path of going against tradition, of pre-marital relationships, rebellion, falling in love, and teen angst has to ultimately end in the land of Mickey Mouse and Starbucks. Yup.
This is not America-bashing.
This is not an endorsement of the novel. (But also not a condemnation - read whatever you want.)
But this description is hilarious. I've not read this novel, but I enjoy, in a purely unironic way, of how similar it seems to be those Wild Swans-ish narratives, except it has sheiks, apparently: y'know, oppression by government and tradition in your homeland, breaking free, escape/journey to America, yay to individualism and acceptance forever and ever. Yeaaaah. It is, as they say in fandom, nice fic. The really weird thing about these sort of narratives is how unironic the authors seem to regard the US as this ultimate life goal and font of good capitalism. Then again, I guess if you're escaping Oppression and Evil Dictators, there isn't that much time for navel-gazing.
By the way, has anyone else noticed that once these heroes/heroines make their way to the US, they don't go anywhere else? It's kind of a downer. Just think, you get through evil customs and jump through immigration hoops, you get citizenship and then, wham, condemned to Picket Fences, USA, forever. It's fine for RL hopefuls but this is fiction: we need more car chases.
