Customer Reviews

The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories, and a Sense of Home

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At the behest of her dying grandmother, Shepard investigated her family's past in India and Pakistan. Her journey is a combination of revelation and research, with some intellectual discussions about the meaning of religion, family, and nationality, thrown in. Chapters alternate between Shepard's research and travels and accounts of her grandmother (her mother's mother,) who grew up a Jew in India and became the third wife of a Muslim businessman who moved to Pakistan after partition. Shepard's father is an American Christian. Her clear writing is full of insights, with many questions left for the reader to ponder.

Mesmerizing memoir, quirky nuanced story telling.

Engagingly discombobulated at times, yet microscopically real, as Shepard explores the nooks and crannies of India and Pakistan using her curiosity, camera and notebook to illuminate micro-cultural threads that weave the tapestry of her heritage. Full of fascinating exposure to Jewish Indians with unique roots and customs who lived harmoniously among Muslims and Hindus for generations. A stirring exploration into the diverse cultural palette of South Asia.

A book to read slowly to best savor the revelations that unfold with Shepard's entertaining and insightful journey full of detailed ambiance and discerning commentary.

Readers beware, as this book may have a lasting impact on your own desire to understand a little bit more about the influences of your own cultural legacy.

I expected this book to be informative and interesting, but I had no idea of how emotionally involved I would feel by the end. Shepard's first-person narrative describes the two years she spent in India, researching her grandmother's roots in a small community of Indian Jews. Her tale depicts the blending and intermingling, successful and otherwise, of nationalities, cultures, and religions, both in India, Pakistan, and in the U.S. Her quest to understand her grandmother better inevitably draws the reader in, and by the end of the book, I couldn't help but feel an intimate connection to both Sadia and her grandmother. Shepard tells her story beautifully, and I was very impressed that this is her first book. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys personal narratives, foreign travel, the intersection of cultures, and questions of religious faith.

Is there a significant difference between family and spirituality, and family and religion? In Girl From Foreign Sadia Sheppard, a young woman with three religions and one home, explores the distinction in a quest to discover her grandmother's roots. In this quest Sadia begins a complex journey into Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Can one have three spiritual homes? Or is it necessary to choose one? What unites all three religions and what distinguishes them? Can one live with the values implicit in all three religions?

This book highlights the ambiguity of life. How we as modern people can get beyond the view of the world in black & white. The world in actuality is a multiplicity of shades of color. Why do we have to define differences rather than developing a sense of expansiveness?

For Miss Shepard, as it is for most of us, it was important to discover her grandmother's physical and spiritual roots. That knowledge of our ancestors gives all of us a sense of physical continuity and a concreteness which then becomes a jumping off point to discover our own self.

I literally took Sadia Shepard's journey with me as I read her story. It is a moving tribute to her grandmother and presents possibilities for individual peace within a warring world.

Sadia Shepard parents were from very different worlds, her father an American-born Protestant, her mother a Pakistani-born Muslim of Indian descent. But in fact the third major monotheistic religion is also represented in Shepard's background, as her mother's mother was a Jew who converted to Islam upon her marriage. When she was dying, Shepard's grandmother urged Sadia to go to India to learn about this part of her history. Fulbright fellowship in hand, Sadia did so, and this book is the result (along with a documentary film - Shepard is a filmmaker).

Shepard's grandmother's family were members of the Bene Israel (or Beni-Israel), Indian Jews whose tradition says that they were shipwrecked off the coast of India, although the dates and reasons are varied, some saying it was after the destruction of the Second Temple, others that they arrived during the reign of King Solomon, and there are other stories as well.

It would be a mistake, however, to expect this book to be a history of the Bene Israel. It's not, and wasn't intended to be. It's a family history, the story of Shepard's family, here, in India, and in Pakistan (where they moved after Partition). In the course of learning that history, she learns about the present-day Bene Israel, a community that is diminishing, as the younger generation looks towards Israel as a homeland, but still striving to maintain its traditions. The book is also the story of how Shepard adjusts to living in India, her friendships and study there. She sees it now through her own eyes and that of her grandmother. Shepard also is trying to find out if she needs to choose one religious path, or if she can reconcile and merge the three traditions into which she was born. It's a struggle that she hasn't resolved, one that most children of mixed religious and ethnic backgrounds go through.

I was struck by the contrast between the warm personal relationships among Muslim, Jew and Hindi and the political conflicts caused by Partition. It's a great sadness and shame and wonder that the adherents of different religions can appreciate and admire and help one another, can be close friends and associates, and yet be willing to kill each other because they worship the same god in different ways.

For another book on the same subject, you might want to read Carmit Delman's Burnt Bread and Chutney: Growing Up Between Cultures-A Memoir of an Indian Jewish Girl.

"The Girl from Foreign" is a great read.

Fulfilling a promise made to her late grandmother, Sadia Shepard set off on a journey to discover who her maternal grandmother Nana was. The journey took a direction Sadia did not anticipate and she emerged from her trips to India and Pakistan with a better understanding of who she herself is.

Sadia's grandmother was born Rachel Jacobs into a small Jewish sect, Bene Israel, in India. Rachel willingly converted to Islam, even though that was not required, when she married. She became Rahat Siddiqi.

Though she remained faithful to a promise to her husband, to raise the children Muslim, Sadia writes that her grandmother was in a personal spiritual conflict after her husband died. What was she? Jewish or Muslim?

According to Sadia, there were strong feelings held by relatives that Rahat died a Muslim. But Sadia said that Rahat gave indications that she wanted a Jewish funeral. Sadia's initial intent was to discover clues that would give her answers about her grandmother religion. Instead, Sadia found her own conflict. She was confronted with the question: was she Jewish like Rachel; Moslem like her mother and grandfather; or a Christian, sharing the faith of her father?

She was pressed to provide an answer. A friend reminded her that each religious tradition called for an exclusive commitment and believed they each required her to select one above the others.

Rather than defining herself as only one, Sadia maintained the religious environment her parents provided and she opted to be an eclectic, taking from each tradition and respecting the differences between them.

Such a response evokes discontent from the religious elite from each of the religious traditions. But there are people who, like Sadia, are courageous enough to admit they do not have all the answers, are not able to blindly embrace another's answers, and are willing to endure the displeasure of others. Their integrity centers around their search for a truth they can believe in.

"The Girl from Foreign" is a memoir of Sadia's search through the different cultures she grew up in as well as her reflections on lessons she learned from her grandmother, to find her own truth. And while it was important for her to come to peace with her grandmother's legacy, I believe she found it was more important that she came to peace with herself.

I highly recommend it. And I am eagerly awaiting her documentary DVD (available from her Web site)about this spiritual quest.

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.

I'm not a big fan of memoir, but Shepard has written the kind of book that makes me want to stop telling people that I don't like memoirs. Really. This book is as insightful as it is informative, and Shepard is the kind of writer you actually want to tag along with on a journey of discovery. Not an easy feat.

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.

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.