1. We Have Always Been Here Samra Habibie
2. We Have Always Been Here Samra Habib Review
3. We Have Always Been Here Samra Habib Pdf

In a suspenseful finale, the book she defended, memoir We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib, survived the final elimination vote and was named 'the book to bring Canada into focus.' An excerpt from We Have Always Been Here, Habib’s memoir Samra Habib’s story is one of bravery, hope and freedom. Born in Pakistan into a persecuted sect of Islam, her family fled to Canada where she entered grade six as a newcomer, experiencing alienation and racism.

4/5 stars.
ebook, 190 pages.
Read from January 29, 2020 to February 1, 2020.

Whoop whoop! First book into the Canada Reads 2020 and its started out with a bang. This year Canada Reads brings one collection of novellas, two memoirs, and two pieces of fiction. I started with We Have Always Been Here which is one of the two memoirs heading into the debates. We Have Always Been Here will be defended by Amanda Brugel during the debates taking place from March 16-19th.

Samra spent her childhood years growing up in Pakistan in fear of religious persecution as well as the threat of a highly patriarchal society that stifled her and her family. After being sexually assaulted by a family friend her life became even more restricted. From a young age Samra had a fire in her that couldn’t be put out no matter what was thrown at her. When violence started to escalate her family was thankfully able to pack up and flee to Canada to safety. Samra and her family found themselves in a new home where they were not as affluent as they were in Pakistan. Samra struggled as a new immigrant at school and even more so with her identity as she struggled between her conservative family values and a country with a new way of life that she found immensely appealing. Samra is married and divorced, twice, before the age of 25 and goes on an exploratory journey with her own sexuality as she realises her own queerness. Still, Samra is drawn to her religion and needs to find a new way to connect with her church and her family as she blooms into her true self.

How do you find yourself when the world tells you that you don’t exist?

Samra is now an advocate for the queer Muslim community with her writing and photography to help highlight and bring light to queer Muslims who have been in her situation. Samra’s writing is frank and engaging as she details the story of her life without asking for sympathy. Her journey is an empowering one and one that I didn’t want to put down. Samra embraces her queerness, femininity, and religion with grace and strength and I thoroughly enjoyed reading her memoir.

Is this the one book to bring Canada into focus? While this is an immensely important topic we will have to wait and see what the other books bring to the table to the debates.

In her debut memoir, author Samra Habib writes with lucidity and sensory depth, taking care to maintain the specificity of her experience without resorting to cultural absolutes. We Have Always Been Here traces the author’s childhood through her early adult years, navigating multiple spaces and identities, from her fears and joys growing up as an Ahmadi Muslim in Pakistan under President General Zia-ul-Haq to the complexity of her identity as a queer Muslim in Canada. Given the extraordinary challenges she has encountered, one might easily expect bitterness in Habib’s retelling, but quite the opposite is the case – Habib writes through a lens of compassion, hope, and ever-widening circles of understanding.

One of three daughters, Habib paints a rich picture of her life growing up in Pakistan. She maintains a challenging but loving relationship with her father, with whom she shares a passion for architecture and interior design. Her mother appears as a portrait of resilience and complexity: she manages to throw Habib a birthday party even as riots break out in the family’s neighbourhood.

Habib’s tale also resonates with the responsibility of being a child thrust into the position of having to grow up fast: when the family arrives in Canada, it falls to her to communicate in English with the national authorities. This is a heartbreaking insight into the burden children carry when they become the go-betweens for their newly immigrated family – children must take on the role of speaking for parents who, in their home countries, were capable, eloquent, and apparently able to handle any situation.

We Have Always Been Here Samra Habibie

Displacement is felt deeply in the body and the heart. Habib’s experiences attest to the double exile of not being able to return home but not quite belonging in her new country. She writes about making money selling roses to strangers and seeking refuge in an ESL classroom, and highlights the systemic barriers that new immigrants face, emphasizing the shifts she felt within her own family dynamic: “[It] seemed we’d simply traded one set of anxieties for another. Sure, we were no longer afraid of being killed by religious extremists on our way to school, but not knowing whether we’d be able to make next month’s rent didn’t ease my mind either.”

We Have Always Been Here Samra Habib Review

Perhaps one of the most encouraging trajectories in Habib’s life involves the evolution of her relationship with her mother, who had arranged a marriage to a cousin when Habib was a teenager. Habib suggests that her mother truly felt that she was doing the best thing for her daughter; while it would be easy to judge the older woman for her decision, Habib recognizes the limitations of what the “best” really means in situations in which women cannot make choices for themselves. “I wonder if my mother ever dared to imagine what her best could look like,” Habib writes. “Did she ever have the luxury to envision a best made up of decisions that were good for her without feeling selfish and guilty?”

Author Samra Habib’s debut memoir is filled with tenacity, vulnerability, and heart.

The marriage to her cousin failed, as did another to a kind man Habib loved but was not in love with. Following these relationships, Habib confronted her own queerness, finding solidarity on the streets of Japan: “How far I’ve travelled, to arrive at the simple truth about myself.” Imbued with a newfound sense of pride and ownership of her identity, Habib returns to Toronto and finds a path and purpose at the city’s Unity Mosque, where she is inspired by fellow queer Muslims. Habib’s empathetic willingness to withhold judgment toward her mother’s earlier attempts to force her into a role she was not comfortable with provides her with the foundation to forge a new relationship as a queer woman, one built on humour and honesty: “[S]he’d ask me the same questions she might have asked if I were dating a nice Muslim boy: Do they come from a good family? Are they respectful? Do they make you happy?”

Habib embarks on an international creative photography project, centering the voices of queer Muslims from Turkey to Toronto. One of the most haunting passages in the book addresses her recollection of the night Donald Trump was elected president of the U.S., with all its negative implications for queer and marginalized communities. Habib writes of waking up in a hotel room in North Carolina, bracing herself for what was to come: “When I awoke, Trump’s victory had gone from hypothetical to almost certain: the nightmare was real.”

We Have Always Been Here Samra Habib Pdf

At a time when it’s easier – and often preferred – to compartmentalize identities, Habib encourages her readers to confront their own assumptions about incompatible identifications and embrace the commingling of various intersecting nodes of being. A coming-of-age and coming-out story, We Have Always Been Here is a brave book, one that undoubtedly required great reserves of tenacity, vulnerability, and heart to write. It is to be hoped that readers will receive it in the same spirit.