#ReadSoulLit Photo Challenge – Day 15


Bookish Stuff / Sunday, February 15th, 2015

Day 15 – Novel Set Abroad:

Easy choice for me today novel set abroad, I immediately thought of  Kinky Gazpacho:  Life, Love & Spain by Lori L. Tharps.  It’s an autobiography/memoir of Tharps discovery of Spain when she goes to live and study in Salamanca.  Eye-opener. Funny. Frustrating.  Confusing.  Those are a few of the emotions TharpsIMG_1425 goes through.  It’s written light-heartedly while at the same time being pertinent on issues of race, relationships, culture differences among others.  Learning about Spanish culture was very interesting through the eyes of a young African-American girl, who can’t wait to get to a European country where race doesn’t matter.  So, she thinks.

“It had been a month and I still felt like I had those first two weeks in Casablanca.  Alone, isolated, and uninspired to do anything about it.  I hadn’t anticipated feeling culture shock in a Western European country, so it hit me much harder.  Most of the other Americans in my program didn’t seem to share my problem….I wanted to change immediately.  I wanted to be Spanish for the entire year but didn’t know where to begin.  The Spaniards in my classes, who I thought  would become my tour guides into la vida española, didn’t even seem to notice me, much less attempt to be my friend.” (Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love, & Spain, p. 80)

 

 

2 Replies to “#ReadSoulLit Photo Challenge – Day 15”

  1. I went with The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin or as renamed for the US publication, The Secret Lives of the Four Wives. Although I read the original hardcover version, I posted the paperback cover’s image because I think it’s gorgeous. This book is set in Nigeria so it meets today’s theme, but I chose it because it also touches on a topic most Western/American readers don’t experience in our daily lives – Polygamy. This book delivered a witty, suspenseful tale inside the Segi household held together by a tenuous bond among the wives amid Nigerian customs and and examines the struggles inside a (fictitious) polygamous household: http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Lives-Four-Wives/dp/0061946389/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1CM9QM8A1J2KDM2FV807

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