This is a difficult book to review, as it was at times difficult to read, so in this review I want to let Alyan’s words speak for themselves. Alyan, a Palestinian poet and novelist (she wrote The Arsonists’ City, which I highly recommend), has written a memoir about her own history as well as her parents and grandparents. It’s about her childhood childhood moving from Kuwait to Beirut to America. She also tells of her experiences with addiction, her struggling marriage, and and her journey to motherhood through infertility, miscarriages and finally parenthood via a surrogate.

She frames her memoir around the story of Scheherazade, the woman who was forced to tell a king a thousand and one stories so he didn’t kill her. There is a theme throughout this memoir of the violence that men do to women, but she also reflects that there are kind men too, and that most of the time the person that hurts her the most is in fact, herself. In this passage she describes the trauma caused by a “Bad Boyfriend”:

What happens to a story when a crucial fact appears? Suddenly it changes, like weather. There is furious editing, a scribbling in, a revisiting of all the old sites. Now the worst part wasn’t that I had gone back for more. It wasn’t the years I lost due to a mystery villain. It was that I believed him. I really did.

It was hard to follow at times, since Alyan often crosses timelines and perspectives, sometimes telling the stories of her parents or her husband. At one point in the book she tells her story of a friend’s death while alternating paragraphs with the story of a trauma her husband experienced.

Throughout, she talks about how her family, and so many others, have been displaced over and over again, from Gaza and Palestine and Kuwait and Beirut. She writes about what it means to be part of the Levantine diaspora and what it means to be “home.” There is no single identity of her people, but her stories, and those of her family, are all connected, as she shows in the opening chapter when she traces the paths her two grandmothers took that resulted in her parents meeting and giving birth to her.

In one passage, she is in Arizona when she has a vision of herself as a child:

I crouch by the child. This child that was loved. This child that lay on the floor of a car. This child that was summoned in song before she took her first breath. My father’s voice: Bring us a baby named Hala. I keep my eyes closed. I whisper for her. I feel her come closer. This child walking through the desert. This child kissing her father’s cheek. This child in one country, then another, then another.

Ultimately, this is her story about how she came to be a mother. Each chapter represents a phase of the pregnancy of her surrogate. She writes about how she, her husband, and the surrogate each experienced the pregnancy. I haven’t been a parent, nor have I ever tried to have a child, so it’s definitely outside of my own experience. Sometimes I struggle with books that are primarily about trying to have children, but in this book I never felt that way. Maybe because there is so much more to Alyan’s story.

In you is the story of sailors, occupiers, the occupied, the people who never left, people who were made to. You will learn to live within this, as we all do.

It’s a powerful, lyrical memoir. Hala’s story is often gut-wrenching, in her experiences as a refugee and as an alcoholic. Even so, there are so many layers to her story, and so many beautiful moments.

Note: I received an advanced review copy of this memoir from NetGalley and publisher Avid Reader Press. This book was released June 3, 2025.

This memoir is organized around Hala Alyan becoming a parent through surrogacy. The book moves from “Preconception” to “Birth,” with each chapter in between representing one month of the pregnancy. This makes the book out to be more linear than it is; within this frame, Alyan explores much of her life. Ultimately, it did feel a little more scattered than artful to me, and I would have appreciated an organizational scheme beyond the very loose containers of months of pregnancy, but Alyan is a fantastic thinker in everything she does.

In the present timeline, Alyan is seized by an all-consuming desire to become a mother. She’s experienced infertility, a series of miscarriages. She selects and corresponds with a surrogate, trying to navigate this unique relationship with care. Her husband, who doesn’t come off very well here, expresses ambivalence in parenthood and goes to Mexico to clear his head for a few weeks. Alyan also analyzes their unlikely marriage.

Another recurring thread is Alyan’s alcoholism and sobriety. She returns again and again to what drinking has done to her, the ways it structured her college years in Beirut, what made her wake up and want to get sober, to live. From those years, she also recounts an ex-boyfriend who ran a shame campaign against her, which is devastating to read.

Like she does in much of her work, Alyan thinks about multiple displacements. Displacements from Palestine, from Kuwait. Her family’s initial settlement in the U.S., when she went by “Holly.” What it means for her to be a forever diasporic subject, a little American, a little Syrian, a little Palestinian. Much of her heart is in Beirut, though she endured difficult things there, as well. Alyan situates this work within a tradition of stories of and about Arabs—she opens by meditating on Sheherazade and the imposed term of “the Levant.” She also writes beautifully about her family, especially her parents and grandmother.

If you liked this, try her poetry collection The Moon That Turns You Back (2024), which explores many of the same things!

(Received as an ARC from Avid Reader Press) This book isn’t one you speed through but rather a read that you have to sit with, to allow the words to fully sink in and infiltrate your spirit. The author shares some very personal experiences, some extremely raw and vulnerable moments from her life that overall help you connect to her journey to motherhood. It was all the more fascinating to read a story about a woman going through fertility challenges and ultimately surrogacy as I’m 36 weeks pregnant myself at the time of reading this book (May 2025).

Her writing style is naturally very poetic and descriptive, hence the suggestion to take your time reading this one. Not to mention the author does jump between timelines and places so you have to pay attention to keep storylines straight. I very much honor and respect the author, her experiences and her way with the English language but overall it wasn’t my particular style of storytelling nor a book I found myself particularly gripped by.

Thank you to Avid Reader Press and Simon and Schuster for the opportunity to read this book ahead of its publication date next month (June 2025).

Thank you to Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster & NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to articulate how much this memoir affected me. Alyan is so incredibly vulnerable and giving us a glimpse into her life. She decides to use a surrogate after having multiple miscarriages. We follow this process with her as well as walking through memories and experiences throughout her life and her families lives through Palestine, Kuwait, Syria, and Lebanon. They’ve escaped war-torn villages and cities—being forced out of their homes leaving behind all they know. She also discusses her sobriety from alcohol and her relationship with the father of her child. I am grateful for the experience to read her story.

Following her experience of desiring motherhood and wanting to honor her ancestors and all of the women and mothers before her. As a mom myself, I was so emotional as she became a mother and what she told her daughter. I remember whispering to my baby and tell him so many things he’ll never remember, but they are moments I’ll never forget.

This memoir is one of my favorite reads of the year so far. I highly recommend it, friends.

It comes out 6/3/25. Add it to your TBR, babes!

CW: blood, miscarriage, alcohol, medical content/procedures, war, genocide, racism death, grief

4.5 Stars. This is such an excellent memoir that gorgeously interweaves personal and communal/intergenerational trauma. I loved the 9-month structure, although I did ultimately wish for a bit more organization within the chapters (at multiple points, there was a bit of jumping around after mentions of pretty heavy and significant topics where I craved that she'd linger and dig in a bit deeper). There's a great deal of heavy content in this memoir, from war and government violence to infertility to addiction to sexual violence. But even still, Alyan finds hope and beauty. It's a powerful and truly unforgettable read.

Alyan has already proven herself to be an excellent writer of both poetry and prose and now she can add another format to her list of incredible talents: Prose nonfiction. Wow. This book blew me away. Although it is prose, it is still poetic. The memoir is written in many short vignettes, some as short as a sentence, but each one packs a powerful punch. I'm cutting out a page to frame in my daughter's room, if that's any indication of how wonderful this book is. Fans of her previous works will not be disappointed, and I hope this memoir brings her even more fans!