I'LL TELL YOU WHEN I'M HOME A Memoir

In this poignant, fragmented memoir, poet and novelist Hala Alyan reflects on her journey to motherhood through surrogacy. She narrates with an emotional intensity that matches the intimacy of the prose, her voice sometimes scratchy with grief, sometimes full of love. The memoir unfolds in a series of nonlinear moments and memories--of her marriage, her college years in Beirut, her childhood in Kuwait, along with her experiences with immigration and the Palestinian diaspora, alcoholism, and the heartbreak of infertility. Alyan's cadence--both in the writing itself and her performance of it--is often poetic, and it's easy to get caught up in her beautiful delivery. This is a thoughtful, complicated memoir about navigating motherhood and selfhood in multiple worlds. L.S. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2025]