I'll Tell You When I'm Home

By: Hala Alyan

Narrated by: Hala Alyan

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • AN NPR BOOK OF THE YEAR • ONE OF TIME’S 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF THE YEAR • AN ELECTRIC LITERATURE BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR • 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.

Critic reviews

"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...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."

Engaging and Touching

I really enjoyed listening to this book, at times. it is hard to listen to due to the author's honesty about her struggles with alcohol but the story is so touching, heartfelt and real. Evoked a lot of emotion.

Incredibly well written autobiography

This autobiography weaves powerful story telling with Hala’s own story. It is the best book I have read in a long time so I decided to listen to it as well and the author’s reading of it is truly exceptional. A gem.

Phenomenal

It was so amazing to read Hala’s book after seeing her read and discuss it in Providence. Beautiful storytelling, writing and so much heart

Authentically Palestinian, Syrian - woman

When you find a story that you can’t stop hearing and don’t want to end! How honest and authentic. We all have those things we wish we did differently and lessons learned, and Hala presents what it means to navigate ts life through the extra challenges as a Palestinian. The costs is so much more… and the value of survival feels szconstantly threatened. She is a consummate storyteller!! Thank you - a real treasure.

Her droning voice and navel gazing

I had to stop listening at month 4. I just couldn’t take it any longer. Every chapter the same - drunk, traveling, mining her history for understanding and coming up short.