An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir

I was really looking forward to a good story but sadly, this one doesn’t deliver. She goes off on so many different directions and seems unable to know her own story. She makes a point of mentioning all the books she has read, movies she has seen and her education but seems to lack any common sense. She has a story but needs a biographer to write it.

what to think about this book. The first part, which reflects the title, was quite interesting as a tale of the author's brief time in Afghanistan filtered through many years of living and some diary entries of the time. She finally escaped a terrible marital situation and returned to the U.S. where she continued her schooling and became a feminist writer and scholar. I kept on reading because I respected her subject knowledge, research and well readness. But the further I got, the more of a slog it became. Diatribes against burkas, Islamic terrorism, cruelty to women, her ex husband whom she still interacts with, Osama Bin Laden, Islam in general, the political and economic mess in Afghanistan today, Afghan history, yaddda yadda...in no particular order and mismashed together. By the end I was pretty disgusted and didn't care anymore. The book could use some better editing and reorganization. It just went all over the place. Granted the issues presented are sad, shocking, terrible, etc. But I think it was overkill, banging on over and over. The book would be better if it had just told her story and what she learned personally. The other stuff was extraneous to purpose and would be well presented in a separate book. Some of it was elucidating but then became repetitive and confused.

This book is not what the title would indicate. A somewhat small portion is spent on the experiences of being a bride in Kabul and the rest is a history lesson. I tired of all the references and quotes by other people and other publications. I think there is some prejudice when it comes to the plight of Jews. She talks of how 3,000 people were killed in 9/11 and we went to war but 30,000 Israelis have been killed in the Arab Israeli conflict. Well, 9/11 did happen on American soil, so we tended to take that a bit more personally and what is omitted is that far more Palestinians have perished. But beyond that, I felt this was a rather tedious read.

I was really intrigued and then found the book really difficult to get through. Maybe it was because I found her, and her story very unsympathetic.

This book has been overwhelmingly interesting to me. I can't imagine reading it and not being deeply affected. The blend of pure honesty, scholarly care and accuracy, deep background, with the womanly drama in the foreground, is exciting, thought-provoking and simply pulls one in. I don't understand the cavils about "memoir" -- the word. One can write a memoir of a certain experience or period of one's life. It does not have to encompass the whole of one's life. There is nothing misleading in this use of the term. There are travel memoirs, war memoirs, memoirs of Paris in the twenties. An American Bride in Kabul is exactly what the title promises -- and much more besides, since it brings us up to the present in a way that casts a backward light -- from the perspective of an educated and mature woman -- on what happened to the young girl that Phyllis Chesler once was. Although her experience was extreme, since she found herself cast into a culture where human progress had stopped at the door of the women's quarters, most women will recognize some aspect of their own experience, even in western settings, in the riveting story Phyllis Chesler tells so truthfully. I can't think when I've read a book that walked off the page and into real life the way this one did.

The story was interesting, what little of it there was. There were many more references to other books and other's experiences in Afganistan along with much history and politics than there was an actual story. If you are interested in that type of thing, it would be a good informational book. I really just wanted to read about her experience and there was very little of it offered. I quit reading the book about half way through after she finished her experience and started in on all the History etc. I just don't feel the book was marketed properly for what it truly is, a little like Abdul-Kareem. :-) The $11 I spent on this book was not worth the experience for me.

Phyllis Chesler tells the story of true love, unfortunately with a man who's religious limitations, both self imposed, and due to external cirumstances killed her naive infatuation, and almost herself. I became a fan of Phyllis (and have since had the pleasure to meet her in person) through what I consider one of the best books on the subject of woman to woman bullying "Woman's Inhumantiy to Woman."Doubtful that Phyllis can approach any subject other than with heartfelt passion. "An American Bride in Kabul" is a memoir that lays the foundation to an inexplicable love story the author has with Afghanistan. Page after page you wonder why she didn't cut all ties to her former tormentor, or a country, that seems to have little interest to step out of it's archaic, and difficult to understand customs. Phyllis' research is impeccable, my head still spins by her citations and mentions of other books, exiled Muslims and Jews on the subjects of politics, history, feminism, and everything related to the burqa. One thing remains certain - there is a bond between Phyllis and Afghanistan, a soul connection that runs deep and can't be extinguished, just like the love she once felt, that still simmers on a deep level. As women in the West we need to read these stories to remind ourselves that we have sisters in other parts of the world who need us to help and support them, or if nothing else to not give up on them.

Western feminists that complain about petty misogyny yet refuse to even address some of the real issues and actual horrors that their Afghan 'sisters' must endure should read this book & perhaps focus their efforts on something a little more deserving. Political leaders should read this book - particularly the second half in order to face up to the march of Islamist dominance over Western civilisations before it is too late. Normal ppl should read this book to educate themselves about what it is REALLY like and very probably what we will be facing in western worlds before too long if nothing is done. Media is so desperate to portray the west as the bad guys and to appease islam (often due to financial 'encouragement' by Saudi Arabia) that we are literally sleepwalking into disaster.It was also fascinating to educate myself about historical life in Afghanistan - a country before which I shown little interest & had almost zero knowledge.

I found the first part of the book fascinating, riveting even. The second part was not quite so. It must have been cathartic to write so freely but gosh yes, I would have left him too, far behind. I was quite cross that the book ended with the mention of being his first, not ex, wife. What a sadness.

This book has many strands in it. For me at this time - the strand that made the deepest impression is Phyllis Chesler's journey to feminism, a journey that started with her relationship with an Afghani student. She has maintained friendly contacts with her entire ex-family for over 50 years. And thus she has become one of the very few Western feminists to care meaningfully about the position of women in other cultures. She is also exquisitely placed to understand the nuances of Islamic and Jewish cultures- and while she is highly critical of Islamism, she has never indulged in Islam--bashing.

Hard to believe how women suffer in Islamic countries. Phyllis Chesler was luck in that her husband allowed her to return home. I pity those women who haven't had such understanding husbands. They are still trapped abroad

Getting a deep inside look beneath the surface of a very private culture.