The Girl From Foreign by Sadia Shepard

From the Publisher

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

Sadia Shepard grew up in a happily complicated family just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, her father a white Protestant from Colorado and her mother a Muslim from Pakistan. It was always a joyful home, full of stories and storytellers, where the cultures and religions of both her parents were celebrated and cherished with equal enthusiasm throughout her childhood. 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 the Muslim woman, Rahat Quraeshi, Sadia had always known her to be, but in fact was born Rachel Jacobs, a descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny Jewish community whose members believe they are one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, shipwrecked in India two thousand years ago.

What was complicated had become downright confusing; Sadia was now intimately linked to the faiths of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity and the customs of Pakistan, India, and the United States. At her grandmother's deathbed, Sadia promised to begin the process of filling in the missing pieces of her family's fractured mosaic, and with the help of a Fulbright scholarship, she set off for Bombay. Sadia's search to connect with the Bene Israel community led her to discover more about India's tumultuous history and the haunting legacy of Partition, and she was forced to examine what it means to lose one's place, one's homelands, and one's history.

Weaving together humorous tales from her crosscultural childhood with anevocative account of a small Jewish community in transition, The Girl from Foreign is Sadia's poetic and touching attempt to reconcile with her past and help determine her future—when offered the choice, will she be able to decide between the religious and cultural identities that have shaped her? It is the stunningly written and unforgettably evocative story of family secrets, forgotten roots, forbidden love, and, above all, eye-opening self-discovery. Sadia

The Washington Post - Carolyn See

Besides being a personal memoir and a portrait of a family that includes the world's three major monotheistic religions, The Girl From Foreign is a meditation on how our individual memories inevitably slip away, either into oblivion or into that dull collective consciousness we call history…what a rich tapestry of theology, art, emotions and forgotten lore she's uncovered! As our personal memories turn into history, all too often the colors are leached from them. But Sadia Shepard tints the colors back in. We see lavish Muslim weddings, Jewish villages hidden in Indian jungles, earnest lovers reaching across religion and culture. The author's laudable accomplishment is that she yanks her grandmother's story from the coffin of forgetfulness and breathes it back into life.

Publishers Weekly

"Who is Rachel Jacobs?" the 13-year-old asks her Muslim grandmother Rahat Siddiqi; "that," Nana tells her, "was my name before I was married." Thus does a grandmother's stunning reply and a granddaughter's promise "to learn about her ancestors" set Shepard's three voyages of discovery in motion: her grandmother's history; the story of the Bene Israel (one of the lost tribes of Israel that, having sailed from Israel two millennia ago, crashed on the Konkan coast in India; and her own self-discovery (her mother was Muslim, her father Christian, and her grand mother Jewish). Shepard balances all three journeys with dexterity as she spends her Fulbright year, with an old hand-drawn map and her grandmother's family tree, unraveling the mysteries of Nana's past while visiting and photographing the grand and minuscule synagogues in Bombay and on the Konkan Coast. A filmmaker, Shepard writes with a lively sense of pacing (her year proceeds chronologically, interspersed with well-placed flashbacks) and a keen sense of character (getting to know her friend, escort and fellow filmmaker Rekhev as gradually as she does, or capturing the Muslim baker who makes the "only authentic challah in Bombay" in a few strokes). Shepard's story is entertaining and instructive, inquiring and visionary. (Aug.)

Kirkus Reviews

Documentary filmmaker Shepard searches for her history deep in the heart of India's tiny Jewish community. Growing up in Boston, the author knew that her mother was a Muslim from Pakistan, her father a Christian from Colorado. When she was 13, in 1988, she learned that her grandmother had been born in Bombay, a member of the Bene Israel community, which believes it is one of the lost tribes of Israel. Shortly before Nana's death in 2000, Shepard promised she would go to India and study her ancestors. Her debut memoir begins 15 months later as she arrived in muggy Bombay to fulfill that promise. The ensuing trip was full of meetings with colorful characters and pensive reflections on identity, community and family. Shepard's journey through India took place as the world was rocked by the 9/11 attacks, which provided a recurring backdrop to her travels. In the nonlinear narrative of Part One, "Storytelling," the author dips back in time to recall how her parents met, to talk about her childhood and to examine her grandmother's influence on the family. Then she settles into "Fieldwork," a more conventional, chronological documentation of her journey. It throws up a number of intriguing revelations. One member of the Bene Israel community talked openly about the dwindling job opportunities for young Jews in Bombay, partly rectified in recent times by the booming call-center industry. Others seized on Shepard's ambivalence about religion and advised her to study a faith, preferably Judaism, and pick a partner from that denomination to marry. The author also traveled to Pakistan, where her grandmother and millions of other Indian Muslims moved after Partition in 1948. At Nana's old flat inKarachi, Shepard discovered a sheaf of her letters; these, together with the stories she told her granddaughter about her past, constitute the book's most interesting parts. A readable account that gives a vivid taste of life in present-day India as well as a poignant glimpse of complicated family relations. Agent: Fredrica Friedman/Fredrica S. Friedman and Company

Product Details

• ISBN: 159420151X
  
• ISBN-13: 9781594201516
• Format: Hardcover, 384pp
• Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
• Pub. Date: July 2008
• Sales Rank: 21,229