Audrey Maxwell [nee Roberts] … a chapter in Rosemary Breger and Rosana Hill (eds). Cross-Cultural Marriage. Identity and Choice, Oxford, Berg, 1998, …. ISBN 1 85973 968 7 paper … with this reproduction being rendered possible by our nephew-in-law Tissa Abeywardena
Although this volume focuses on intermarriage, it seems appropriate to include some voices of children of such marriages – which are becoming more numerous because of the expansion of worldwide contacts within the ‘global village’. This chapter is not an in-depth study of a representative sample, but rather intends to recognize that cross-cultural marriages produce consequences for their progeny. Such children face ambiguous loyalties and difficult choices in their life encounters. Nevertheless, though media coverage tends to highlight their problems rather than their advantages, the offspring who spoke to me indicated clearly that they felt there are many rewarding features deriving from their cultural inheritances. It is encouraging that, though having no claim to representativeness, these accounts at least all end on a positive note.
In 1995 I interviewed eight such ‘children’ (aged between eighteen and thirty four), reached through networking among people connected, in one way or another, with the University of Oxford. The respondents are middle class, well educated and articulate. I encouraged them to talk of their life histories using open-ended, unstructured, tape-recorded interviews. The accent was on their own thoughts and how they see their world.
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But last week, the slow rhythm of the bay was dealt a shock. The US embassy, followed up by Sri Lankan police and Israel’s national security council, warned of a serious terrorist threat in the area. Israeli travellers were believed to be the intended target of a planned attack and were told to evacuate immediately. Hundreds of police and senior intelligence officials descended on the small coastal town, setting up patrols and road blocks.
