In Exile: Rupture, Reunion, and My Grandmother's Secret Life

by Sadiya Ansari

Overview

In a deeply personal investigation, award-winning journalist Sadiya Ansari takes us across three continents and back a century as she seeks the truth behind a family secret. Why did her grandmother Tahira abandon her seven children to follow a man from Karachi to a tiny village in Punjab? And though she eventually left him, Tahira remained estranged from her children for nearly two decades. Who was she in those years when she was no longer a wife or mother? For Sadiya herself, uninterested in marriage and children, the question begets another: What space is available to women who defy cultural expectations? 

Through her inquiry, Sadiya discovers what her daadi's life was like during that separation and she confronts difficult historical truths: the pervasiveness of child marriage, how Partition made refugees of millions of families like hers, and how the national freedoms achieved in 1947 did not extend to women’s lives. She sees the threads of this history woven through each generation after, and finds an unexpected sense of belonging in a culture that, at first blush, shuns women for wanting lives of their own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487012373
Publisher:	House of Anansi Press
Publication date:	08/13/2024
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	485,177
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

SADIYA ANSARI is a Pakistani Canadian journalist based in London. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, VICE, Refinery29, Maclean’s, The Walrus, and the Globe and Mail, among others. She has reported from North America, Asia, and Europe, and her work has changed legislation and won awards. She is co-founder of the Canadian Journalists of Colour, a 2021 R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellow, and a 2023–24 Asper Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia.

What People are Saying About This

Samra Habib

In Exile is a study in making choices that reverberate across generations. It adds an important vantage point to the aftermath of the Partition and how it continues to shape so many. It’s a rallying cry to honour our pasts. Sadiya’s journalistic eye offers a crucial historical glimpse into what was lost during the Partition.

Elamin Abdelmahmoud

I am completely floored by this book. What Sadiya Ansari manages to accomplish here is a rare, miraculous feat—a high-wire act of boundless empathy and incisive investigation. In Exile is a curious and profound book, as rigorous as it is tender. When a writer is willing to be this honest and this vulnerable, it is always a gift that I do not take for granted. Sadiya carefully pulls together threads of painful family history and questions that go unspoken to create a deeply poignant and unforgettable work.

Jen Sookfong Lee

In Exile is more than a memoir—it’s a fascinating excavation of Sadiya Ansari’s family mythology. Devastating, sensitive, and generous, In Exile is a beautiful story of how women caught in the middle of politics and patriarchy make the hardest of decisions. A searing, gorgeous read.

From the Publisher

"A beautiful story of how women caught in the middle of politics and patriarchy make the hardest of decisions. A searing, gorgeous read."—Jen Sookfong Lee, author of Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart

"Filled with vulnerability and revelation, this book explores what unexpected flowers may bloom from even the most tangled family roots."—Anuja Varghese, author of the Governor General’s Literary Award–winning Chrysalis

"I am completely floored by this book … A high-wire act of boundless empathy and incisive investigation."—Elamin Abdelmahmoud, author of Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces

In Exile is a study in making choices that reverberate across generations. —Samra Habib, author of We Have Always Been Here

Anuja Varghese

In Exile blends the best of memoir, mystery, and investigative journalism. Wry and relatable, Sadiya Ansari is a gifted storyteller who confronts the impacts of Partition and the pitfalls of memory to piece together a personal history that poses broader questions about what it means to be a wife, a mother, and a woman—and what happens when women take meaning into their own hands. Filled with vulnerability and revelation, this book explores what unexpected flowers may bloom from even the most tangled family roots.

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/24/2024

In this triumphant debut, journalist Ansari investigates a family mystery involving her grandmother. Growing up in a large Pakistani family in Toronto, Ansari had a complex relationship with her paternal grandmother, Tahira, who showed little interest in Ansari despite sharing a bedroom with her for years. The only bedtime story Tahira ever told Ansari involved a couple burdened with seven children, whose hopes for a son were never realized. The tale took on new significance when Ansari learned from an aunt that Tahira once left behind a husband and seven children for a new romance. Ten years after Tahira’s death, Ansari began asking her father and other family members and friends about her grandmother’s past, supplementing her interviews with research about the 1947 partition of India, which Tahira lived through. Ansari learned that, after being widowed in her early 30s, the fiercely religious Tahira pursued a second marriage that eventually fell apart. Ansari paces the account of her investigation like a crime novel, alternating first-person sections with reconstructions of Tahira’s life in India and Pakistan, and drawing powerful parallels between Tahira’s struggles and her own trepidations about marriage and motherhood. The result is insightful, surprising, and beautifully written. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] triumphant debut … insightful, surprising, and beautifully written." — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

From the Publisher

2024-06-08
A Pakistani Canadian journalist investigates the life of her mysterious Pakistani grandmother, a woman who abandoned her family to follow a lover.

Ansari never understood Tahira, the taciturn grandmother who lived with the author’s family for a decade until she died. Then an aunt casually revealed that Tahira had once walked out on seven children to be with another man. The “strict code of propriety” that governed family interactions kept Ansari from asking questions. However, when she was studying journalism in graduate school, Ansari began to probe her grandmother’s past through interviews with family members, historical research, and travel to Pakistan. She learned that Tahira had once dreamed of receiving an education, only to be forced into marriage at 14 to protect her family’s economic interests. She became a widowed mother of seven 20 years later just as India was undergoing Partition. Her Muslim faith forced her to move north as a refugee to the new nation of Pakistan, where she struggled to raise her children. It was during this time of hardship that Tahira, lonely and without male protection, met a widower who dazzled her with his knowledge of poetry. Her eldest son, who disapproved of disregard for rules surrounding remarriage, forced her to choose between her lover and children. Tahira chose the former and endured disappointment from her lover and the pain of being separated from children she loved. Ansari succeeds in her goal to recast a vilified grandmother into a feminist heroine who struggled for self-determination in a culture that allowed her no choice. Yet as she reveals, the whole project of writing about Tahira raised many difficult issues, “inflicting damage [on loved ones] under guise of just doing my job” as an investigative reporter committed to the principles of ethical journalism.

A thoughtful and informative memoir and familial investigation.

Kirkus Reviews