Customer Reviews

The Punjabi's Wife

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book's truly depicts an young girls adventure into an unkown culture. It catches you from the beggining and keeps your interest throughout. I could not image experiencing the fear, loneliness and the anticipation of the unknown, that the author describes within these pages.
I would highly recomend this book to anyone.

The subject matter of this book is what hooked me, but after reading the first few pages I felt as though I were having a revelatory discussion with a good friend. I recommend this book for content and voice; Lara Lyons is obviously a talented writer with a educational and heartrending story to share.
--Jen Knox, author of Musical Chairs

This is the story of a young, naive girl from the Midwest, who marries a Pakistani and moves to his country. It's an eye opener for anyone from a western culture trying to understand that part of the world, its people, their religion and their culture. Ms. Lyons descriptions of Pakistan, its people and of her life there keep you turning the pages. It's a must read for any westerner contemplating marriage to a Muslim.

I was intrigued by the book's title because I am a Punjabi and a Muslim, but my other reason was to learn how Pakistan was in 1960s from the perspective of a foreigner living there. I think the author did a great job sharing her story, her style was captivating and engaging.

I truly sympathize the difficulties and heartbreaks the author endured in this experience of her life, I wish she didn't go through that. But we all make mistakes and these mistakes contribute to our growth and wisdom. I remember some of the heartbreaks I endured only to realize later in my life how much they contributed to my growth as an individual.

Some of the generalizations the author made about Islam or Muslims are not accurate, I wish she did more research. There are good, bad and ugly in almost every culture and some cultures may have more share of one versus the other because of various factors, but we can't lump them all in one category, if we learned any lessons from our history.

I personally abhor the idea of foreigner marrying in Western countries, just to get citizenship. However I am all for multi-culural marriages, as it brings beauty and diversity in our country and the world in general. I have witnessed many successful and happy marriages between Muslims (even Punjabis) and women from Western cultural background, as long as they share a loving bond with each other. I am also happily married to someone from a different cultural/ethnic background(although we share the same religion) and we have not experienced any challenges. In the nutshell it all depends on individuals.

As an individual I am blessed with many good qualities in my personality and character and I truly believe that I developed these qualities inspired by the teachings of Quran and examples of Prophet Muhammad(Peace Be Upon Him). I also have many flaws, but I owe them to myself and always try to improve on them. I have met many great and wonderful people who practice religions different than mine, but they radiate the beauty of the respective religions they practice. The problem only occurs, when individuals tend to justify their wrong doings by misinterpreting the religion and that is what gives inaccurate perceptions to others, who do not know much about the religion. Individuals and societies with such tendencies have caused countless problems historically speaking, we should abhor this phenomenon instead of abhorring any particular religion.

In the nutshell I think this book is thought provoking and can help us understand each other better.

This is an autobiography of a girl (Lara) just out of her teens, (back in the late 1960's) who fell in love with a Pakistani man, temporarily in the U.S.A. trying to earn a degree to bring back with him to his homeland in Lahore, Pakistan.
The two met, acknowledging appealing qualities in one another...enough for him, Ali, to ask Lara to marry him in the U.S.A., later to have her follow him back to Pakistan. So prior to his returning home, they married here in the United States. Ali then returned to Pakistan and once Lara finished her schooling and had saved up enough money for her plane fare, she bravely ventured off into an unknown world (with countless cultural differences still to be discovered), yet proud to start a new life with her husband.

Soon she is surrounded by many Muslim woman and Ali himself, all grooming her for a second marriage, beholding traditions and customs she finds herself unaware of to what is to become...such as a different style of dress, a new Muslim name... that of 'Layla', a Muslim marriage, and her home to share with Ali's family, particularly with that of her very religiously devoted mother-in-law.

I liked this story because even though I have read countless books on Middle Eastern and Muslim dominated countries, I learned even more, as well as a refresher course on the culture of Pakistan and it's neighboring countries. Layla took in (at her young age) much history and culture of her travels while living within this region, and I enjoyed that very much. They had their own car, so they were lucky to visit many landmarks with travels that included the good with the bad.

This book read very smoothly and I recommend it to anyone interested in Muslim culture and a story of people coming from two different parts of the world. It was quite an interesting story with many components involved.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Punjabi's Wife. I bought my sister a copy, also, and she couldn't put it down. The colorful descriptions, historical facts, etc., add to the very interesting storyline. I recommended it to my book club.

The honesty evident in the first few pages of this book helps the reader understand what the author went through during her marriage to a Punjab. The story is a true account of her married life and is also an adventure from the first word. An excellent read. I would recommend it highly.