Not From Here: The Song of America

by Leah Lax

"Leah Lax understands that everyone has a story and a secret. To experience this ourselves, we have only to read her utterly irresistible Not from Here." -GLORIA STEINEM

When Leah Lax was asked to write an opera to celebrate local immigrants, she began by spending a year listening to accounts of upheaval, migration, and arrival told to her in confidence by people from around the globe. She felt she had discovered the song of America, found its great beating heart.

In interludes between the astounding, powerful stories in Not From Here, Leah uncovers the lost history of her Jewish family and finds a larger context for their story. “In a way,” she writes, “we Americans are all immigrants.”

Leah has had a dual career as an author and librettist. Her previous book is Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home, the first gay memoir ever to come out of the Jewish ultra-Orthodox world. Her story is now a modern opera by composer Lori Laitman.

"A masterwork! Brilliant, profound, heart-shattering, hopeful - I couldn't breathe! Not From Here is full of stories of people who hang onto hope, people who will not give up struggling for what could be, and it's all interspersed with Leah's own extraordinary journey. This is the kind of book that leaves you forever changed." -CAROLINE LEAVITT, New York Times bestselling author

"An amazing and powerful book of the struggles and triumphs of people from far away who we might have dismissed as 'other,' except that Leah edges them dexterously into our hearts." -CHITRA DIVAKARUNI, American Book Award winner, author of The Last Queen

392 pages, Paperback

Published March 28, 2024

About the author

Leah Lax has written award-winning fiction and non fiction as well as an immigrant opera for Houston Grand Opera, reviewed with acclaim in The New York Times and broadcast on NPR. Her work has appeared in Salon, Longreads, Dame, HuffPost, and Lilith, among many others, and in anthologies by Seal Press and North Atlantic. When Leah isn't writing, you can find her playing her cello, or with her wife kayaking around the world.

Reviews

[Megan McCarthy-Biank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lax treats their stories with the care, attention, and admiration they deserve. As the reader, I couldn’t believe the chain of events that led these people to flee their homes and seek safety and security in America. And how, ironically, the situations they fled were caused or facilitated by the country they were fleeing to. I have never felt so proud yet so disappointed in my country as I have while reading Not From Here. This book provides the insight that so many of us need right now.

In-depth book review: https://cantinabookclub.com/review/no...

Podcast interview with Leah Lax:
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0vL1...
YouTube: https://youtu.be/XCcxBIF_pmQ?si=8L_Dg...

[kglibrarian (Karin Greenberg) · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's nothing more humbling than reading about the hardships of people who fled persecution and came to start a new life in America. We were all immigrants once. For those of us who grew up with the luxuries of this great country, it's easy to forget that so many others experienced the depths of despair before arriving in the U.S.

In 2007 Leah Lax was commissioned to write an opera based on the immigrant stories of her city of Houston. The Refuge debuted with The Houston Grand Opera that November. Years later, some of the stories she collected are compiled into this book along with additional ones including her own family's history.

Representing El Salvador, Vietnam, Cuba, Nigeria, Ukraine, India, and Pakistan, the individual experiences highlighted are as different as the varied cultures. Lax writes powerful commentaries that accompany her detailed accounts of each story.

Connecting to people through their families' backgrounds helps us all step away from our own ingrained beliefs. Seeing how others embody the American Dream can give us the perspective we so desperately need in these divisive times.

[Jennifer Lang · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What is home?" Leah Lax asks halfway through the story. Not From Here is the story of her being tasked to write an opera about local immigrants in her hometown of Houston, of listening to refugees and immigrants from all over the world and their impossible journeys from their home countries to the country of the Great American Dream. While their journeys differ, they all share struggle, loss, pain. Lax writes beautifully: "Home is to be among people you understand--because you speak their spoken and emotional and physical language: you know their song. Home means that you--we--own, collectively, the very dirt beneath you." Such rich writing and food for thought, especially for those of us, like her, like me, whose grandparents immigrated from the Old World to the New World, arriving with nothing. Such an interesting perspective for me as an immigrant in Israel, here by choice. In listening to all of these people's harrowing stories of survival, Lax explores her own family's immigrant story and her place in it. At the heart.

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Immigrant Voices of Struggle, Survival and Hope!!! Leah Lax proves to be the first gay memoirist to come out of the Ultra-Orthodox world. In writing Not From Here, she opens up the secret world of life as an immigrant from around the globe.... Africa, USSR, Central & South America, Cuba, Pakistan, Vietnam. She opens her heart to the stories of many people who found freedom and a new life in America. During her search for clarity about their experiences coming to America, she hears her own voice and struggle to find her own personal identity. The final analysis becomes The Refuge, a Libretto, that is brilliant! This is our song, the song of all of us who were Not From Here.

[G.P. Gottlieb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hired to write a libretto, Leah Lax interviewed dozens of immigrants from around the world and heard tales of hardship and struggle that remind us: we’ve always been a nation of immigrants - very few of us came from here. https://newbooksnetwork.com/not-from-...

[Phyllis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be required reading for any potential ICE agent. So moving, powerful, and important.