“Mixed” Couples and the Range of Differences Between Them

Reviews the book, Intercultural couples: Exploring diversity in intimate relationships edited by Terri A. Karis and Kyle D. Killian (see record 2009-01367-000). This edited volume contains 12 chapters that are as diverse in content as the types of couples that the book attempts to describe. Kyle D. Killian takes on the admirable task of pulling together all of the material included in the volume in its introduction. According to Killian, the thread that weaves these seemingly disparate chapters together is that in each case one partner is from the United States and another is from abroad. This is a book that is likely to be of interest to a potentially broad range of readers. It reads at some points like a self-help guide for mixed couples when it offers therapeutic proscriptions (see Chapter 11, for example). At other points, it is packed with academic descriptive terminology and is likely to be appealing to specialists with narrowly defined interests. Thus, there may be a few chapters in the volume that would provide useful supplementary reading for a graduate-level course on cross-cultural psychology or interpersonal relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)