Worth a Read Yes
Length 336
Quick Review Ayelet Tsabari was born and raised a Yemeni Jew in Israel. The death of her father was a catalyst leading her into a transient lifestyle always leaving for her next “home.”
The Art of Leaving is an apt title for this moving and sometimes cringe worthy memoir. What can be seen as a memoir about leaving people and places can also be read as a search for belonging, home, and being seen. People yearn to belong to someone, somewhere. Ayelet documents her life of wandering around the United States, loving, gaining citizenship in Canada, roaming Southeast Asia, returning to Israel, becoming a mother. She is not only leaving people and places, she’s leaving herself. The parts she doesn’t like, the parts she doesn’t want in her narrative, the parts that other people have forced upon her. Tsabari yearns to belong in the world and in her own skin.
Tsabari grew up in the Tel Aviv area of Israel. She was the daughter of a beloved lawyer and the second youngest in a large family. At the tender age of ten, her father passed away. She spent her adolescence rebelling and searching for an identity while simultaneously flaunting and avoiding the stereotypes hounding her as a Yemeni and a woman. She joined the army as all Israelis do; instead of being a good soldier, Tsabari pushed all the boundaries and buttons (literally). After completing her time, she left. Exploring life in foreign lands, she did what many young people do: experiment in many ways. At one point landing on a beach in Goa, India, she didn’t even own shoes.
I had no idea about the racism in Israel towards people of Yemeni heritage. The Art of Leaving greatly opened my eyes to a culture and country I know very little of. The plight of Yemenis in Israel is reminiscent of the treatment of blacks in the United States; different, of course, but similar. Tsabari references childhood bomb shelters and gas masks like they were as every day as an ice cream and a swing set. Maybe, they were.
Tsabari touches briefly on the irony of her very Jewish urge to wander and find a home when her home is Israel in The Art of Leaving. Jewish people wandered for centuries searching for a place to call home with no success. She wanders with the same yearning of her ancestors. She looks for a home for her body and a home for her soul.
I loved how Tsabari writes her memoir. It is very much in the present even though the events are in the past. The syntax and tense pull the reader into her life, identity, and crisis of being. There is a transparency between herself and the reader. She has no qualms about looking back into her diary and stating she wrote a story she could live with. Human. Reshaping stories and lives to fit in a pretty box. Her narrative was not the only narrative reshaped with years and in memories. Her great-grandmother was demonized and hated. Life is rarely as simple as walking away. Life and stories are complex and layered. Many of Tsabari’s life choices are questionable at best and downright stupid at worst. That’s the point. We all make choices in moments without thinking or ignoring what should be done. Tsabari took her own path and doesn’t apologize for it. I always admire the unapologetic even when I want to save them from their mistakes, which you can’t do. Saving people doesn’t really exist.
The Art of Leaving is a very personal, unique, and beautiful memoir. Even though she grew up under very unique circumstances, her story is very relatable. Many people wander with the need to find home.
Plot hole question: What happened to your feet??? I need to know!
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Memorable Quotes
“…they are proof that you don’t have to stop traveling to grow up.”
“Leaving is the only thing I know how to do.”
“Stories to her were luxuries, like dreams and regret.”
“I never feel that much anymore, which I suppose is the trade-off for not falling apart.”
“I didn’t want to become someone else. I wanted to be me.” (Motherhood)
Title: The Art of Leaving
Author: Ayelet Tsabari
Publisher: Random House
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9780812988987
