Each chapter presents one woman’s story and then links it to a discussion of gender roles, the mail-order bride industry, and the severe economic and social constraints of life in Russia. The transitional economy has often left people, after a month’s work, either unpaid or paid unexpectedly with a supply of sunflower oil or toilet paper. Women over twenty-three are considered virtually unmarriageable in Russian society. Russia has a large population of women who are single, divorced, or widowed, who would like to be married yet feel that they have no chance finding a Russian husband. Grim realities such as these motivate women to seek better lives abroad. For many of those seeking a mail-order husband, children or parents play significant roles in the search for better lives, and they play a role in Johnson’s account as well. In addition to her research in the former Soviet Union, Johnson conducted interviews in the United States, and she shares the insights—about dating, marriage, and cross-cultural communication—of a Russian-American married couple who met via the Internet.
Intercultural couples struggle, often quite successfully, with the kind 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. This engaging anthology of literary nonfiction celebrates the creative potential of choosing diversity and explores in many voices the real-life social, cultural, and spiritual consequences of this choice. 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.
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