Real Posts Reports: Reviews of Life in Countries Worldwide

Foreign At Home and Away: Foreign-Born Wives in the U.S. Foreign Service

by Margaret Bender

Reviewed by Patricia Linderman

Elisabeth gave up her position as a doctor in Vienna when she married a U.S. diplomat and moved to Japan. Carmen, from Chile, was college educated but arrived in Washington with little knowledge of English. By the time her husband was reassigned abroad five years later, she was speaking the language fluently and had earned an MBA from American University.

Australian-born Margaret Bender, who is married to a U.S. Foreign Service officer, has collected the stories of forty courageous women who, like her, left their homes, families and often careers to join a diplomatic community where at first they didn't quite fit in, representing their husbands' countries rather than their own.

These women faced not only the usual expatriate challenges, but additional ones arising from their cross-cultural marriages. Some had trouble communicating in English within the Embassy community. Many were frustrated by intrusive security requirements, especially when seeking employment. They remained foreigners even on "home leave" or a Washington assignment, while often being viewed as "Americanized" by people in their home countries -- they truly became "foreign at home and away."

Before I started to read this book, I wondered why it was limited to female spouses, or to the U.S. Foreign Service. But as the stories quickly drew me in, these questions disappeared. Bender set out to record the voices of a sometimes-forgotten group of people, and in so doing, she has assembled a collection of honest, intimate case studies, collected, edited and commented upon with care and skill.

This is what makes the book valuable to anyone living abroad or considering doing so, not just those in bicultural marriages or the diplomatic service. Although the passages are loosely grouped by theme, the book is not primarily a guidebook or manual for foreign-born spouses. The women profiled in this book -- most identified by first name only -- give us the privilege of looking deeply into their lives as expatriate spouses, revealing their struggles with depression, homesickness and loneliness, as well as their discoveries and successes.

From Prabhi Kavaler, killed in the Embassy bombing in Nairobi, to the CIA wife whose husband told her about his true employer just before their wedding, these women come to life like characters in a good novel. Yet they are all the more fascinating because they are real. Don't miss getting to know them.

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