The Bride Wore Red: Tales Of A Cross-Cultural Family. - Review - book review

Studies in Short Fiction, Wntr, 1998 by Marty Ennes-Marvin

THE BRIDE WORE RED: TALES OF A CROSS-CULTURAL FAMILY by Robbie Clipper Sethi. Bridgehampton, New York: Bridge Works Publishing Co, 1996. xiii 216 pages. $19.95 cloth.

Even with men and women of the same race, religion, and culture, marriage is statistically chancy. Toss cultural differences with the rice, and odds are the marriage is doomed to fail. Robbie Clipper Sethi, herself married to a Punjabi Sikh, provides miniature portraits of cross-cultural marriages in The Bride Wore Red. This collection of 14 tightly written stories flows smoothly, almost like a novel, with each piece having a different focus. Interesting and diverse characters weave in and out of the stories as new members of the Singh family are introduced.

The book, possibly the saddest collection of short stories about marriage I have ever read, opens with "The Bride Wore Red." The main characters, Sally, an American, and Deshi, a Punjabi Sikh, live in New Jersey. The narrator tells Sally,

   You've stayed with Deshi because he is the only man you ever wanted who did
   not require a wife to play dumb to make him feel smarter. Though you are
   rather small, he is not much bigger, so in this relationship the big man's
   impulse to protect the little girl has been minimal.

Sally and Deshi have a relationship based on mutual love and respect. When they are alone, they appear to draw strength from each other. When Deshi's family is present, the problems (from blessing their house to caring for Deshi's parents) become insurmountable. Soon, the family is always there.

Sally is a doctor, but, because she is a woman, her medical advice is ignored by the Singh family whether she is in India or in the United States. When Deshi dies in an airplane crash, Sally sees her life as a failure. In "The White Widow," she says, "Sorry that it didn't work, I mean. Your whole life ... mine."

In an interesting but awkward story, "Missing Persons," Sethi attempts to give one plot to two different couples. The first is an American woman married to an Indian man and the second an Indian woman married to an American man. The author intrudes on the flow of the story and tells us, "Switching genders, even crossing cultures, in this story has not succeeded in breaking the characters' habits, altering their traditions, or undermining society's expectation. The authorial experiment has failed." The experiment failed in the writing of the story, and all of the marriages she describes are cursed with failure because the characters cannot break the habits of their traditions and societies. Even in the marriages in which the couples stay together, the partners are disillusioned and unhappy.

In "A White Woman's Burden," Sally tells us, "Hindus believe that life is hell, the liberation from this life the only heaven worth living for." The life Sethi describes in her collection is also hell--hell wrapped up in a giant bow of love. But this collection prompts questions about love, marriage, self-worth, and loyalty to family, heritage, and country. These are not easy, first-read stories. They beg to be read again and again. They invite discussion and soul-searching.

MARTY ENNES-MARVIN Southern Arkansas University