![]() ![]() From less than a chapter ago, 20 pages earlier.īy then, this had happened. One particularly egregious instance is when Habib comes to a profound realization about her second marriage: “And I had changed: I barely resembled my former self, the version of me who sought acceptance and security- or was it invisibility – in a heterosexual marriage.” Her former self. Each chapter reads more like its own coincidentally sequential blog post, with big life events summarized in throwaway lines and new factoids dropped in later sections that weren’t mentioned earlier, sprinkled in as though we hadn’t explored that time period already. ![]() Actually, it doesn’t really read like a BOOK. Somehow, many of the scenes, from her childhood in Lahore to her high school years to her exploration of her sexuality, feel like a movie montages but somehow even more fleeting. ![]() I would have happily spent more time reading about it, because Habib is a good writer, but unfortunately, I don’t think this is a very good memoir. ![]() If that sounds like a lot to cover in 220 pages, that’s because it’s not covered all that much at all. In We Have Always Been Here, activist, writer, and photographer Samra Habib writes about her emigration from Pakistan to Canada, her relationship with Islam and the persecution her family faced as members of the Ahmadiyya sect, her arranged marriage to her first cousin, and her journey of discovery and acceptance of her queer identity. ![]()
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