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The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories, and a Sense of Home | 
 enlarge | Author: Sadia Shepard
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $11.03
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 11048
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 159420151X
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.04924054092
EAN: 9781594201516
ASIN: 159420151X
Publication Date: July 31, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product 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 familys 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 Sadias 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 ones place, ones homelands, and ones 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 womans 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 great travelogue; thin on the Jews of India; okay on the Kindle November 28, 2008
This book works well as a travelogue and personal history. It contains some interesting glimpses of Indian-Jewish life and culture, but is more about the author than the locals. Look elsewhere if you're keen to learn about the Jews of India. I read it on the Kindle where the photographs don't render very clearly but they aren't essential to the book.
A Book That Defies Categories November 24, 2008
Sadia Shepard's first book defies categories. It is one part biography (of her grandmother), one part travelogue (to India and Pakistan), one part personal memoir (the account of Ms. Shepard's search for her grandmother's roots and her own identity), and one part ethnic study (the Bnei Israel Jews of India), with a hint of one or two love stories thrown in. While "the girl from foreign" initially is how Ms. Shepard is described by some of her acquaintances in India, ultimately it is a description of how Ms. Shepard views herself, with ties to America, India and Pakistan, with spiritual roots in Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and yet not quite feeling at home in any of those diverse worlds. Ultimately it is an account of a personal journey, and, without Ms. Shepard ever imposing herself on the reader, the reader comes to feel that he or she has shared a confidence with a close friend.
Beautifully written memoir October 11, 2008
Sadia Shepard's memoir of her search for her grandmother's past among the Bene Israel Jewish sect in India is a wonderful story, a meditation on identify, culture, and religious tolerance. As befits her training as a film maker and photographer, she draws vivid pictures of various scenes and individuals in India, Pakistan, and the United States, moving back and forward in time, but always bringing us on her journey. Her portrait of the tiny, centuries-old Bene Israel community, for so long cut off from most Jewish life, now studying Hebrew and moving to Israel at a rapid pace, is moving in part because it celebrates her relationship and grief for her grandmother. It also portrays a similar sense of grief for a community that is both dying (in that so many younger people are emigrating) and coming back to life (as they rediscover Jewish heritage and culture). Her contrasting portraits of a Pakistani Muslim wedding of a cousin and a Bene Israel Indian-Jewish wedding of a young friend are very movin. Her sympathy with both young brides helps us understand why she does not feel compelled to choose between the various traditions of her heritage.
An Extraordinarily Relevant Yet Very Personal Memoir October 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Sadia Shepard's book tells the compelling story of her personal journey to find a grandmother's somewhat hidden history. It is at once a personal quest and a universal story of desire for gaining a better sense of self. Nana's background was complex, and had roots in both one of the lost tribes of Israel and also in the Partition in India and Pakistan in 1947. This is an outstandeing memorial to a beloved grandmother, yet truly much more to the average reader. The times we live in beg many emormous questions of us with regard to the turmoil between Israel and its neighbors, and in educating our Western mentality about the complexity and size [therefore the influence] of Islam. The author has the gentle voice of reason and conveys the need for contemplation of such issues without ever being overt or preachy on the subject. The need for cross-cultural understanding and tolerance is specific in Nana's story, and also of vital importance for survival and peaceful co-existence in our modern world.
The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories, and a Sense of Home October 7, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Beautifully written . . . this book was so touching and the writing style so elegant that it brought the characters to life in a way that made me feel like I could make a connection to each and every one of them. The one section of this book that really affected me was when her grandmother, Nana, toward the end of her life was terrified that she would not see her parents in heaven because she had converted to Islam. It shattered my heart. I loved the "affair" the author had with a gentleman in India. It is so difficult to put in words how the book affected me . . . I have been highly recommending this book to everyone which I do not do lightly.
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