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by Roza Nozari
From a queer Muslim woman and artist, a generous, insightful memoir that traces her journey toward radical self-acceptance and of exile from her ancestral home.
As the youngest of three daughters, and the only one born in Canada soon after her parents' emigration from Iran, Roza Nozari began her life hungry for a sense of belonging. From her early years, she shared a passion for Iranian cuisine with her mother and craved stories of their ancestral home. Eventually they visited and she fell in love with its sights and smells, and with the warm embrace of their extended family. Yet Roza sensed something was amiss with her mother's happy, well-rehearsed story of their original departure.
As Roza grew older, this longing for home transformed into a desire for inner understanding and liberation. She was lit up by the feminist texts in her women's studies courses, and shared radical ideas with her mother—who in turn shared more of her past, from protesting for the Islamic revolution to her ambivalence about getting married. In this memoir, Roza braids the narrative of her mother's life together with her own ongoing story of self, as she arrives at, then rejects, her queer identity, eventually finds belonging in queer spaces and within queer Iranian histories, and learns the truth about her family's move to Canada.
All the Parts We Exile is a memoir of dualities: mother and daughter, home and away, shame and self-acceptance, conflict and peace, love and pain—and the stories that exist within and between them. In sharp, emotionally honest and funny prose, Roza tenderly explores the grief around the parts we exile and the joy of those we hold close in order to be true to our deepest selves.
"In this luminous work, Roza Nozari bridges the void between what's been lost and what endures. Her story doesn't seek to erase the fractures but to honor them, showing how, even in a life of displacement, pieces of 'home' can be found in the quietest, most unexpected corners. All the Parts We Exile reminds us how trauma shapes us, not by breaking us, but by etching traces of where we've been, making us whole again, piece by piece." —Samra Habib, author of We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir
"Thought-provoking and meditative, All the Parts We Exile brings the plight of strong willed daughters, immigrant parents and their personal histories into clear empathetic light. Nozari's prose is nuanced and wrought with imagery, vivid and eloquent all at once. The memoir is symphonic in scope: orchestrating excruciating rites of familial identity, radical self-acceptance, loss, and personal growth. A talented writer and artist, Nozari deftly charts a moving history that is both complex and mesmerizing, sweeping across timelines and through the queer spaces of Toronto and Iran. A dazzling opus of what it means to be a person grasping for answers of belonging and emerging transformed. Nozari's journey invites readers to rethink the immigrant family narrative." —Lindsay Wong, author of The Woo-Woo and Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality
"With sparkling prose and captivating storytelling, All the Parts We Exile gifts insight into a life both relatable and unique. Roza Nozari does not equivocate, evade or apologize. Here is a story that is hard, soft, witty and touching." —Jenny Heijun Wills, author of Everything and Nothing At All
"All the Parts We Exile wraps an immigrant, coming of age, and coming out story around each other, probing the question: how do we exist and fully belong across identities? A fearless exploration of the visceral longing for home, a reckoning with trauma, grief, and displacement, and an ode to the healing power of artmaking, this is an exquisitely written, honest, tender and enthralling memoir." —Carmen Aguirre, author of Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter
This information about All the Parts We Exile was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Roza Nozari is a writer, artist, and therapist based in Tkaronto ("Toronto"). Known as YallaRoza on social media, her work weaves together writing and visual art to share stories of wounding, healing, and community. Her work invites radical re-imaginings of our world, towards one more invested in collective healing and liberation. She is the illustrator of three children's books: Little People Big Dreams' Mindy Kaling (2021), Fluffy and The Stars (2023), and The Anti-Racist Kitchen (2023). Her illustrations have been featured locally and internationally—from university campuses to sports arenas and pride festivals.
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