Chapter One

Okay, I finally received Committed in the mail, sat down with it last night, and read the intro and first chapter. First impression: disappointment. To be fair, I had just spent the day reading about critical metageography, which will be abundantly clear by the time you've finished reading this post. Nonetheless, I think Gilbert made a tragic and, to me, frustrating mistake by starting off this story with an East-West, Occidental-Oriental comparison. Gilbert obviously realized she was treading on delicate ground; as she asserts, she is not an anthropologist and actually knows very little about the community she entered for an afternoon of questioning. Why then, does she dive right in to describing the Hmong women, analyzing and measuring their conceptions of marriage against a "modern Western" (whatever that's supposed to mean) idea of marriage? I find it more than a little insulting that she "observes" Hmong women for an afternoon and then makes sweeping generalizations about their approach to marriage. Gilbert is right when she says that she is operating way above her pay-grade. Even the platitudes about "modern Western" women struck me as unexamined. Isn't she speaking from a very particular place--in terms of profession, class status, consumption habits, region? I know that Gilbert is not writing an "intellectual" book per se, but I'd like to hold her to higher standards. She is a smart woman whose book will be read by many an American woman. Why, then, perpetuate some very deductive ideas about women, marriage, and geographical location? Why use this visit with Hmong women as her "a-ha" moment about marriage? Maybe it really was--though something strikes me as insincere about it. I hope that in following chapters Gilbert examines her own, very personal conceptions of marriage, and the process of coming to those conceptions, instead of relying on cultural platitudes.