An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice

by Khizr Khan Narrated by Khizr Khan

Overview

This “moving [and] wonderful” memoir by the Muslim American Gold Star father, captivating DNC speaker, and 2022 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient is “a story about family and faith [that] can teach all of us what real American patriotism looks like” (The New York Times Book Review).
*
“[Khizr] Khan offers a valuable perspective as we continue to debate what kind of country we want to be.”-The Washington Post (Best Books of the Year)
*
Khizr Khan electrified viewers around the world when he took the stage at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. And when he offered to lend Donald Trump his own much-read and dog-eared pocket Constitution, his gesture perfectly encapsulated the feelings of millions.
*
In this urgent and timeless immigrant story, Khan shares the extraordinary, ordinary journey that led him to that moment: He was the oldest of ten children born to farmers in Pakistan. He was a university student who read the Declaration of Independence and was awestruck by what might be possible in life. He was a hopeful suitor, awkwardly but earnestly trying to win the heart of a woman far out of his league. He was a loving father who, having instilled in his children the ideals that enticed him and his wife to America, tragically lost his son, an Army captain, in the Iraq War. He was and is a patriot, and a fierce advocate for the values enshrined in the American system.*
*
An American Family shows us who Khizr Khan and millions of other American immigrants are, and why-especially in these tumultuous times-we must not be afraid to step forward for what we believe in when it matters most.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Linda Chavez

…moving…An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice is as much the universal story of the immigrant experience in America as it is the story of one particular family's struggles and sacrifice…Khan's book is also a story about family and faith, told with a poet's sensibility…Their faith imbues every facet of their lives; but it is a tolerant, modern Islam, the kind practiced by most Muslims living in the United States and around the world. The book is a wonderful refutation of…nativism and bigotry, but it is no partisan polemic…"I am an American patriot," Khan writes near the end of his book, "not because I was born here but because I was not. I embraced American freedoms, raised my children to cherish and revere them, lost a son who swore an oath to defend them, because I come from a place where they do not exist." Khizr Khan's book can teach all of us what real American patriotism looks like…

Publishers Weekly - Audio

03/05/2018
Khan, a Pakistani-American immigrant whose 2016 Democratic National Convention speech condemned Donald Trump for his treatment of Muslim Americans, reveals more about his family, including the life and death of his son Humayun, a U.S. army captain killed in Iraq. Khan’s voice is steady throughout the book, though there are moments—not only when describing the death of his son, but also early on when recounting his sorrow at being separated from his parents as a boy, or the joy of first discovering the U.S. Constitution—when he is audibly overcome by emotion. (That’s true for listeners as well; many will be hard-pressed to get to the end of this beautiful memoir without crying.) There are also unexpected moments of wry humor throughout, and Khan proves himself to have a skill for comic timing, like when he quips, “There had been no sexual revolution in Pakistan,” after describing his cluelessness at how to court the woman whom he would eventually marry. This moving memoir is made all the more powerful when heard in the voice of the author. A Random House hardcover. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

I’d like to say to Mr. and Mrs. Khan: Thank you for immigrating to America. We’re a better country because of you. And you are certainly right; your son was the best of America, and the memory of his sacrifice will make us a better nation—and he will never be forgotten.”—Senator John McCain
 
“A small but lovely immigrant’s journey, full of carefully-observed details from the order in which Ghazala served tea at a university event, to the schedule of the police patrols in the Boston Public Garden where Khan briefly slept while he was in between apartments, to the description of Humayun’s headstone as a ‘slab of white marble with soft streaks the color of wood smoke.’ . . . Most importantly, the book is an effective argument for the depth of Khan’s love for and knowledge of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the amendments to it. He emerges as such an eloquent advocate for both documents, and for American values, that I finished An American Family with my own sense of patriotism and sense of civic obligation revitalized.”—Alyssa Rosenberg, The Washington Post

“Part autobiography, part civics lesson . . . and part patriotic message about the goodness of all Americans.”—BuzzFeed

“[A] wide- eyed and eloquent memoir . . . A sense of wonder about America’s promise peppers the entire narrative, even as he recounts his early struggles in the country while supporting his wife and three boys. . . . This account is especially resonant now.”—Booklist

“Sometimes it takes a newcomer to point out the beauty that old- timers take for granted. America, more than any other country, was founded upon ideals: individual freedoms, equal protection and due process of law. Khan reminds us that these ideals are worth fighting—and even dying—for. The Khans truly are the most American of families.”—BookPage

“An American Family holds its own alongside other fine memoirs of immigration and would be an inspired addition to any college or high school syllabus. The Gold Star father who spoke so movingly at the 2016 Democratic National Convention is just as affecting on the page.”—Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“Khan’s aspirational memoir reminds us all why Americans should welcome newcomers from all lands.”—Kirkus Reviews

Library Journal

10/15/2017
Khan, the Gold Star father who spoke at the 2016 Democratic Convention, recounts his childhood as the oldest son of Pakistani farmers, as well as the courtship of his wife, Ghazala. As a student, he discovered the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the language of equality inspired him. He and Ghazala emigrated to the United States and raised three children. Their son Humayun joined the army in 1997, while still a student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. When the Iraq War began in 2003, Humayun was given a tour of duty. He was killed by shrapnel in an explosion in 2004; his bravery earned him a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. As the highest-ranking Pakistani American to die in Iraq and the first University of Virginia student to die in combat since Vietnam, his death garnered attention. Khan is successful in evoking the warmth of his son and the sincerity of his patriotism, as well as providing an even-handed and thoughtful rendering of the Muslim immigrant experience. VERDICT Khan's depiction of his family's loss serves as a poignant reminder of what military families sacrifice in service to their country, which the Khans have done with exemplary stoicism and grace.—Barrie Olmstead, Sacramento P.L.

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

Khizr Khan gained public attention at the Democratic National Convention when he talked about the loss of his son in combat and challenged Donald Trump’s vision of America. This audiobook explores his journey from Pakistan to the United States, a true modern immigrant success story. His interest in America was piqued when, as a student in Pakistan, he read the Declaration of Independence. His desire to emigrate was fueled by the kindness of his American boss in Dubai after he graduated from college. It’s a compelling story that is engaging and easy to follow. But Khan’s reading is too slow and deliberate, even when the playback speed is increased. The publisher would have done better to let Khan read the introduction and then turn the remainder over to a professional narrator. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2017-09-03
A politically pointed immigrant success story mingled with equally pointed tragedy.A native of Pakistan, Khan thought of America as a land of cowboys—when, that is, he thought of anything other than enduring homegrown oppression. "If you have lived half of your life under martial law and the rest in a swirl of political chaos," he writes meaningfully, "Western ideals aren't readily in your orbit." Those ideals came to him in the form of an encounter with the Declaration of Independence and its profession of equality and inalienable rights. He found his way to America and Harvard Law, reveling in the civil order that he found nothing short of marvelous while rediscovering the Islam of his birth in its tolerant mode, not the "brutal theocracy" that interpreted the religion back home. Khan, in short, charts the nuanced evolution of an American patriot, one whose son was killed by a car bomb while serving as an Army officer in Iraq. Capt. Humayan Saqib Muazzam Khan was proclaimed a hero and posthumously earned the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for bravery in combat, to which his father characteristically adds a small wrinkle: "My son was dead because he was trying to make sure a stranger wasn't killed by mistake. He stayed true to the shape of his heart." So, it seems, did the father, who became an earnest critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, berating him for his anti-immigrant agitation and his penchant for "stirring the worst of human nature." All those credentials, of course, explain why Khan was asked to speak at the Democratic National Convention, introduced by his son's hero, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and elevated to national attention in the bargain. Self-effacing, the author writes movingly of the events leading up to that moment, which he feared, correctly, might expose him to direct attack on the part of Trump himself. Khan's aspirational memoir reminds us all why Americans should welcome newcomers from all lands.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172195891
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/24/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "An American Family"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Khizr Khan.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Videos