A Palestinian American writer’s story of exile, addiction and surrogacy: ‘I had to do something with the fragments’

In her new memoir, Hala Alyan reflects on her fractured lineage and having a child against all odds

In the poem Hours Ghazal, published in 2024, Hala Alyan writes: “The cost of wanting something is who you are on the other side of getting it.” The line is a glimpse into the mind of a woman, who, at 38, has paid a high price for desire and emerged intact after living through what might feel like several lifetimes for the rest of us.

Alyan is a Palestinian American poet, novelist, clinical psychologist and psychology professor at New York University. She is also the author of a memoir published this week titled I’ll Tell You When I’m Home.

I have never not been a Palestinian. That has never not been written upon my body. In Lebanon, in Kuwait, in Oklahoma – I am what my father is, and my father is a man who was once a boy who was born to a woman in Gaza. Who speaks with the accent of that place.