Imagine spinning a story to reinvent your life. It seems that’s what Chicago girl Norma Khouri did. When sick of her marriage and her mother, she wrote a book detailing her life escaping from patriarchal Jordan, and not only made a pretty penny, she was also granted asylum in Australia. She’s even still sticking to her story. She just invented that American identity in order to escape Jordan. The title of her book is wonderful: Forbidden Love: A Harrowing True Story of Love and Revenge in Jordan – sounds good, eh?

3 thoughts on “invent-a-life

  1. Jim

    Up until the bit about “granted asylum in Australia” it all sounded so believable……

  2. Anonymous

    I am totally new to this blogging thing, and can’t even remember how I landed here – probably through the article on blogging in Guardian Unlimited. Many thanks for some really interesting and inspiring stuff!
    clarekrojzl@hotmail.com

  3. Jill

    Here’s a followup article on this.

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Recommended Posts

Triple book talk: Watch James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me discuss our 2023 books

Thanks to everyone who came to the triple book talk of three recent books on machine vision by James Dobson, Jussi Parikka and me, and thanks for excellent questions. Several people have emailed to asked if we recorded it, and yes we did! Here you go! James and Jussi’s books […]

Image on a black background of a human hand holding a graphic showing the word AI with a blue circuit board pattern inside surrounded by blurred blue and yellow dots and a concentric circular blue design.
AI and algorithmic culture Machine Vision

Four visual registers for imaginaries of machine vision

I’m thrilled to announce another publication from our European Research Council (ERC)-funded research project on Machine Vision: Gabriele de Setaand Anya Shchetvina‘s paper analysing how Chinese AI companies visually present machine vision technologies. They find that the Chinese machine vision imaginary is global, blue and competitive.  De Seta, Gabriele, and Anya Shchetvina. “Imagining Machine […]

Do people flock to talks about ChatGPT because they are scared?

Whenever I give talks about ChatGPT and LLMs, whether to ninth graders, businesses or journalists, I meet people who are hungry for information, who really want to understand this new technology. I’ve interpreted this as interest and a need to understand – but yesterday, Eirik Solheim said that every time […]