An edition of The Girl from Foreign (2008)

The Girl from Foreign

A Memoir

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Last edited by MARC Bot
November 28, 2023 | History
An edition of The Girl from Foreign (2008)

The Girl from Foreign

A Memoir

  • 3 Want to read

In this beautifully crafted memoir, a young Muslim-Christian woman travels to an insular Jewish community in India to unlock her family's secret history.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
384

Buy this book

Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Girl from Foreign
Girl from Foreign: A Memoir
2009, Penguin Publishing Group
in English
Cover of: Girl from foreign
Girl from foreign
2008, The Penguin Press
in English
Cover of: The Girl from Foreign
The Girl from Foreign
2008, Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Electronic resource in English
Cover of: The Girl from Foreign
Cover of: The Girl from Foreign
Cover of: The Girl from Foreign
The Girl from Foreign: A Memoir
July 31, 2008, Penguin Press HC, The
Hardcover in English

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Book Details


Classifications

Library of Congress
E184.36.E84 S54 2008, E184.36.E84S54 2008

The Physical Object

Format
Hardcover
Number of pages
384

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL12433646M
Internet Archive
girlfromforeigns0000shep
ISBN 10
159420151X
ISBN 13
9781594201516
LCCN
2008003912
OCLC/WorldCat
181601815
Library Thing
5546942
Goodreads
2950717

Work Description

In this beautifully crafted memoir, a young half-Muslim, half-Christian woman travels to India to connect with a tiny Jewish community and unlock her family’s secret history. Sadia Shepard grew up in a joyful, chaotic home just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, where cultures intertwined, her father a white Protestant from Colorado and her mother a Muslim from Pakistan. Her childhood was spent in a house full of stories and storytellers, where the customs and religions of both of her parents were celebrated and cherished with equal enthusiasm. But Sadia’s cultural legacy grew more complex when she discovered that there was one story she had never been told. Her beloved maternal grandmother was not a Muslim like the rest of her Pakistani family, but in fact had begun her life as Rachel Jacobs, a descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny Jewish community whose members believe that they are one of the lost tribes of Israel, shipwrecked in India two thousand years ago. This new knowledge complicated Sadia's cultural inheritance even further, intimately linking her to the faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and to the customs of India, the United States, and Pakistan. At her grandmother's deathbed, Sadia makes a promise to begin the process of filling in the missing pieces of her family's fractured mosaic. With the help of a Fulbright Scholarship and armed with a suitcase of camera equipment, she arrives in Bombay, where she finds herself struggling to document a community in transition. Her search to connect with the Bene Israel community and understand its unique traditions brings her into contact with a cast of remarkable characters, tests her sense of self, and forces her to examine what it means to lose and seek one’s place, one’s homelands, and one’s history. In the process, she unearths long-lost family secrets, confronts her fears of failure, and finds love in places that surprise her. Sadia beautifully weaves together the story of her grandparents’ secret marriage and the haunting legacy of Partition with an evocative account of a little-known Jewish community and a young woman’s search for self. The Girl from Foreign is her poetic and touching attempt to reconcile with her family's past and help determine her future. When offered the choice, will she be able to choose among the religious and cultural identities that have shaped her? It is an unforgettable story of family secrets, buried identities, lost histories, forbidden love, and, above all, eye-opening self- discovery.

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History

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May 15, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
April 30, 2008 Created by an anonymous user Imported from amazon.com record