Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

I'll Tell You When I'm Home

A Memoir

ebook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
The rich and deeply personal debut memoir by award-winning Palestinian American poet and novelist Hala Alyan, whose experience of motherhood via surrogacy forces her to reckon with her own past, and the legacy of her family's exile and displacement, all in the name of a new future.
After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman—the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn—to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance.

As her baby grows in the body of another woman, in another country, Hala finds her own life unraveling—a husband who wants to leave; the cost of past traumas and addictions threatening to resurface; the city of her youth, Beirut, on the brink of crisis. She turns to family stories and communal myths: of grandmothers mapping their lives through Palestine, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon; of eradicated villages and invading armies; of places of refuge that proved only temporary; of men that left and women that stayed; of the contradictions of her own Midwestern childhood, and adolescence in various Arab cities.

Meanwhile, as the baby grows from the size of a poppyseed to a grain of rice, then a lime, and beyond, Hala gathers the stories that are her legacy, setting down the ones that confine, holding close those that liberate. It is emotionally charged, painstaking work, but now the stakes are higher: how to honor ancestors and future generations alike in the midst of displacement? How to impart love for those who are no longer here, for places one can no longer touch?

A stunningly lyrical and brutally honest quest for motherhood, selfhood, and peoplehood, I'll Tell You When I'm Home is a powerful story of unraveling and becoming, of destruction and redemption, and of homelands lost and recreated.
  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Accessibility

    The publisher provides the following statement about the accessibility of the EPUB file supplied to OverDrive. Experiences may vary across reading systems. After borrowing the book, you may download the EPUB files to read in another reading system.

    Summary

    A simple complexity publication with images and logos, converted to meet EPUB Accessibility specifications of WCAG-AA level. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images and logos, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order, structural navigation, and semantic structure. Blank pages from print have been removed in this ebook, with related page number spans set on the first following in-spine page. Certain front and back matter pages have been adjusted in the reading order sequence from print, with related page references reordered in the page-list order.

    Ways Of Reading

    • No information about appearance modifiability is available.

    • Not all of the content will be readable as read aloud speech or dynamic braille.

    • Has alternative text descriptions for images.

    Conformance

    • The publication contains a conformance statement that it meets the EPUB Accessibility and WCAG 2 Level AA standard.

    • This publication claims to meet EPUB Accessibility 1.1 WCAG 2.2 Level AA.

    Navigation

    • Table of contents to all chapters of the text via links.

    • Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation.

    Additional Information

    • Page breaks included

    • High contrast between text and background

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      May 15, 2025
      A debut memoir from an acclaimed Palestinian American novelist and poet. "I need this story out--I can feel it clawing my neck, tightening my breath," writes Alyan. In this memoir, she explores the impact that displacement and loss have had on her sense of self. "This was how I'd come to feel, unclaimed, dislocated from the places that made me, the places I'd sworn I'd return to but hadn't." Born in the United States to a father from Palestine and a mother from Kuwait, Alyan spent much of her life in a state of exile as she and her family moved from location to location to escape conflict. "How to explain being Palestinian and American? You must disavow the former to prove the latter." Further, she writes, "You exist in both identities like a ghost, belonging to neither." As Alyan prepares for motherhood, she finds herself confronting her past in order make way for the future. "Number of times pregnant. Five.Number of live births. Zero." After years without success, Alyan sought the services of a surrogate to fulfill her dream of having a child. The arc of her narrative follows the course of the pregnancy. As she ponders the relationship she will have with her child, the author finds her relationship with her husband falling apart. Alyan also explores her past battles with addiction, and other destructive behaviors, and the impact they had on her and her family. Rather than a straightforward memoir, Alyan relates her story like journal entries, transitioning back and forth between time and place, offering small windows into her unique view of the world and creating an intimate experience for the reader. An emotion-packed exploration of the impact of loss on identity.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      May 1, 2025
      In the early weeks of motherhood, poet and novelist Alyan (The Moon That Turns You Back, 2024) feels compelled to explain that her daughter was born via surrogacy. She couldn't carry the pregnancy. Her daughter is biologically hers. In this vibrant, poetic memoir, Alyan unpacks her difficult journey to motherhood and many facets of her past. As a Palestinian American, Alyan grew up between the U.S. and the Arab world. She promised her grandmother she would return to Beirut but instead married a white man and stayed in the States. After years of operations and miscarriages, Alyan contacted a surrogacy agency during the pandemic. When her husband leaves, going off to Mexico as the pregnancy progresses, Alyan confronts her wishes for the future along with the ghosts of her past. The in-betweenness of Alyan's existence and the particular challenges and legacies of her diaspora identity combine with a writer's continual remaking of herself. A poignant exploration of suffering and wonder and a portrait of a woman on the cusp of bringing a new life to her world.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

Languages

  • English

Loading