About the Book
At first, Hala’s baby is the size of a poppyseed. Then a grain of rice, then a lime. After years of trying for a baby, with one miscarriage followed by another, Hala watches from afar as her daughter grows in the body of another woman, in another country.
Hala is not just awaiting news from the surrogate. She is also holding her breath as Palestine and Lebanon, her estranged homelands, are under fire. She goes for long runs to distract herself. She remembers family stories of grandmothers mapping their lives through a tangle of borders; of eradicated villages, invading armies and places of refuge that proved only temporary; of men who left, women who stayed, and the legacies passed down from one to another. Hala decides to name her unborn child Leila, a thread connecting her daughter to The Thousand and One Nights and the women who save by storytelling.
A stunningly lyrical and honest quest for motherhood and peoplehood, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home is a powerful story of unravelling and becoming, of destruction and redemption, and of homelands lost and recreated.
About the Author
Hala Alyan is a Palestinian-American writer and poet. Her novels include The Arsonists' City and Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a Chautauqua Prize finalist. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University.
Reviews
‘A beautiful and intimate memoir of a life in the embrace of stories, Alyan weaves the fine threads of torn and fragmented lives into an irresistible, intergenerational tapestry. I was spellbound from the first page.’ Naomi Klein
‘A story of the violence of exile over generations, a profound desire for motherhood, as well as surrogacy, addiction and the importance of remembering … a story of war and loss – of country, but also of friends, lovers and ultimately her marriage … questioning and lyrical.’ The Guardian
‘[A] gorgeous, lyrical memoir ... I’ll Tell You When I’m Home shows the power of even a single narrative to resist the deliberate erasure of a people and their homeland, the violence of colonization.' The New York Times Book Review
'[A] lyrical memoir that explores the trauma of fractured identity.' Los Angeles Times
‘A poignant exploration of her tumultuous path to parenthood, identity, and displacement … More than a story of motherhood and exile, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home is a testimony of everything at once … a moving tribute to the strength of those forced from their homelands and ruthlessly exploited, as well as a celebration of women’s determination to survive and thrive.’ The New Arab
'Alyan’s poetic prose encapsulates miles in each sentence and paragraph; joyfully, revisiting a passage is another chance at uncovering a new gift. Her nonfiction narrative voice allows the poet in her to shine, especially as each chapter is told in a series of short glimpses weaving together past and present, the old and the new Hala. ... With I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, Alyan has created a record, a story to communicate with those departed and those new to life. In the process, her work is an antidote for others searching for a home they never asked to lose.' Chicago Review of Books
‘A roaring cyclone of memory and imagination and harrowing tribulation. Surrogacy as metaphor for exile. Exile not as a dream for a better life, but as concession, a begrudging necessity. Gaza, San Miguel, Beirut, New York, Damascus—traveling with Alyan’s prose is a thrill. I'll Tell You When I'm Home feels as rich and supersaturated as contemporary consciousness itself—I can’t stop talking about it.’ Kaveh Akbar
‘Hala Alyan writes with sinew and tender force as she masterfully braids the delicate filaments that make a self –body, home, labor, loss – in such a way that the reader can never again disentangle them. This book is a gift, an offering of abundant beauty, full of deep insight into the intricacies of motherhood.’ Alexandra Kleeman
‘Gorgeously written and compelling, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home connects the threads of personal and family histories as its author prepares for motherhood. Hala Alyan is a writer of astounding talent.' Lisa Ko
‘I’ll Tell You When I’m Home is an exquisitely written and unforgettable memoir about what it means to live with the violence and theft of exile and one woman’s devotion to restoring her daughter’s inheritance through the power of narrative.’ Nadia Owusu
‘A powerful, magnificently haunting memoir from a writer I always want to read. It’s great luck to live in a time when Hala Alyan is writing. Get ready to be astonished.’ R. O. Kwon
‘This memoir of pregnancy loss and surrogacy is frantic, intimate, brutal, tender and beautiful. Over the arc of a pregnancy by surrogate, the poet offers up her fragmented heartbreak and kaleidoscopic life. I kept gasping, wanting to close in around Hala, to protect her across time and space from the sharp edges of mother-need inside a body that cannot birth a living baby. She wants her readers in the wound with her, inside the stories that don’t get told enough, inside the body-mind of a displaced woman struggling to create something bigger than herself. Brilliant.’ adrienne maree brown
