To the Mansours, an Arab American family living in Seattle, love knows no borders. But despite our best efforts, sometimes loveand familyare foreign to us . . .American-born Margaret Mansour wants nothing more than to rekindle the struggling twenty-year marriage to her Palestinian husband, Ahmedbut not if it means uprooting their home and children in America and moving halfway across the world. halfway across the world.
Young and ambitious Alison Mansour has a degree in Near East Studies, but her American education and Syrian background are of no use when her new marriage begins to crumble under the weight of cultural and religious differences. The communication between Alison and her husband is already shaky; how will they cope with the arrival of their first child?
Zainab Mansour, the matriarch of her family, never expected to live in America, but after the death of her husband she finds herself lost in a faithless country and lonely within the walls of her eldest son’s home. She wants what’s best for her children but struggles to find her place in a new landscape.
Emerging from the interwoven perspectives of these three women comes a story of love and longing, culture and compromise, home and homeland. Exploring the complex political backdrop of the Middle East from a personal perspective, Where Jasmine Blooms travels from the suburbs of Seattle to the villas of Jordan and the refugee camps of the West Bank, on an emotional journey exploring what it means to be a family.
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An excellent read about Arab American culture.
I really enjoyed this book. It touched on issues that are very real and how people have to compromise with each other in order to keep their relationships viable.
This is a story of a large Palestinian family, in Seattle, WA where two of the sons have married women from the United States. A story which is rich in the culture of the middle east, from the customs, to the food and dress and the never ending loyalty to each other, and the rituals of prayer all which sometimes is hard on the wives the sons have married. It is about the compromises and understanding of cultural differences, and learning how to navigate, their marriages.
The story goes mainly between the lives Of Margaret Mansour, married to the eldest son Ahmed, who has made a good life for himself in the restaurant business in Seattle, but after twenty some years in the USA would love to live once again in the Middle East.
His brother Khalid, a student, meets his wife to be at the university, Alison, and Khalid married shortly after meeting and started a family but have a hard time with the cultural differences which did not seem to be an issue at the time they met.
And Ahmed and Kahlid’s mother, Zainab, who a year ago lost her husband and has been living with Margaret and Ahmed, and who is quite an influential force in this family, who quite often get between her sons and their wives.
All of these characters, need to come to an understanding about what it means to be a united family and how to achieve it, this was a great story of family dynamics, love for their cultures, countries and values. Quite often needing to see a broader perspective, to be able to move on..
I would like to thank NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for the ARC of this book.k