All the Parts We Exile

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 on-going 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 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.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer, Audiobook, Canada, Feminism

256 pages, Hardcover

Published February 25, 2025

Reviews

[Jillian B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This compelling memoir recounts the author’s childhood and young adulthood as the youngest daughter of Iranian immigrants in Toronto. I enjoyed the whole book, but the parts that I found the most stirring involved the author’s reckoning with her identity as a queer Muslim woman. In one memorable section, she breaks up with a beloved partner because she worries her sexuality and identity as an Iranian woman are at odds. She loves her family deeply, and doesn’t believe they’ll accept this part of her. But as she matures, we watch her integrate the “exiled” parts of her identity, owning her queerness, her culture and her faith.

While the details of this book are obviously particular to the author’s experience, many of its themes feel universal. At its heart is the question of how to honour your family of origin while maturing into the person you’re becoming. I think readers of all ages will enjoy this, but I would especially recommend to university-aged people going through their own times of transition and maturation. I think queer youth from conservative religious backgrounds will feel particularly seen by this book.

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breathtaking memoir about coming of age as a queer, Muslim, Iranian young woman in Canada. All the Parts We Exile is about the complexities of immigration, queerness, and faith and trying to makes sense of parts of your self and identity that seem to conflict. About making mistakes, and coming to see your parents for the complicated and flawed people they are. It's raw, but also hopeful and thought provoking. Definitely worth reading and the audio is excellent. I received an audio review copy from Libro.FM, all opinions are my own.

[Nadia]

I'm always awed by the honesty of some writers, the ones who are bold and generous enough to reveal their truest selves. Roza Nazari does just that.

[Amy Quichiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

relatable AF

[Faye 🫀 · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful book 🥺🫶

This memoir weaves together Roza’s journeys both away from and towards her queerness, her Muslim identity, and also her family/friends. This novel talks about so many beautiful themes like the love but also the agony between mothers and daughters, as well as sisters, religious communities, queer communities, the treatment of women in Iran, queer identity in Iran, queer communities in Canada, feminism, Muslim feminism, as well as the realities of growing up with all of these intersecting identities.

This story is beautiful and important and one that I think everyone can take someone away from.

[Tina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading memoirs and I loved reading ALL THE PARTS WE EXILE by Roza Nozari! The author shares her experiences as a queer, Iranian, Muslim woman living in Canada. She shares some relatable moments such as getting bullied in school, dealing with family, dancing choreography to Cry Me a River and moving out for the first time. And some even more relatable moments to me of living in Vancouver and taking the 99 B-Line. I loved the honesty in sharing her story of finding herself and learning more about her culture and how the writing is riveting and approachable. And I definitely recommend the audiobook as it’s read by the author!

Thank you to the publisher for my copy!

[Cheyenne Chow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know if I’ll have the words to eloquently explain how impactful and beautifully written this memoir is. Although culturally I cannot relate, I understand the crux of first generational pressures and the traumas that come with it when you’re on the lower end of the social-econ pole. As white passing, and being raised in culturally diverse neighbourhoods, I am empathetic to the racial, cultural and religious pressures I’ve often seen my friends struggle with, including but not limited to, gender/sex expectations. The parallels in similarity of experiences, being also raised in Scarborough and attending the same university, reaffirmed those experiences of race and culture, validating them in such a different way. Roza is exceptionally raw, self-reflective and vulnerable in the most authentic way possible. It’s as if you are feeling all the emotions that Roza writes of, both through her lens, but also reflecting through your own experiences as they relate or are similar. This book has reminded me to be kinder to the parts I’ve hidden away as a safety mechanism. I wish I could read this again for the first time, truly.

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible introspective story of a queer Muslim woman born and raised in Canada. Nozari gets vulnerable about the experiences that shaped her throughout her life.

I held great empathy as I read, and could even sympathize at certain times. Some of Nozari's experiences are universal to women or today's youth, for example, but the added layers of culture, faith, and diasporic belonging made me feel the weight of just how complicated the world can be.

I loved reading Nozari's story and it has strengthened my bond with feminist values as I look back in my own past. I also loved her writing style - it was more than someone's journal, it was her conscience.

I truly recommend this book to anyone who wants to see how someone can reconcile with intersectional identities and be their true self.

[Moira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating: 4.75 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This has to be the best book I have read this year! I had ordered it from my library and was waiting for it for months, but it was well worth the wait. Now I need to go out and buy a copy.

Just finished reading and I am reeling! i am feeling so many feelings. Nozari wrote an incredible first book! She does an excellent job guiding you through her journey and healing. She more than adequately, I would argue fully, explores the idea of exile as an exile from her home country of Iran but also explores the ways in which she (and by extension the reader) are exiled from ourselves by hiding and shrinking in order to fit others' preconceived ideas. In the end, Nozari's healing brings her home within herself as she reconciles the parts that had always felt at odds with one another but make up who she is in all her fullness as a person.

Will write more about my thoughts on this later! Just! WOW!

[Marie Bencze · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book with tears in my eyes. Nozari is a beautiful writer. Her language is poetry. Her level of self-awareness and her portrayals of the iterations she has embodied are so honest, and explained with such poignancy. I love how she weaves the intergenerational stories together, how her awakenings shift things inside her and how badly she wants to claim authenticity. This is a stunning memoir about reckoning with stories of who we are told to be, and who we are told not to be- and breaking free from everything that doesn’t feel like the right fit.

Without ever naming it, her use of “parts work” throughout is sublime. Holding tenderly each hurt, scared part of herself until it transforms into something supportive.

Gorgeous - “For people like me, arriving has always also meant departing. And because we cannot be in two places at one time, there is always something we are leaving behind. There is always some degree of grief.”

[Kathleen Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Pride month read and wow was it fantastic

[Gabi Revis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the art, found the chapters moving but slowly moving

[Zsa Zsa · Rating 2 out of 5]

What’s the word for being nostalgic for somewhere you’ve never been? FOMO?

[Emma Ciccolini · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often struggle with memoirs, but I loved this book. The stories she told were so raw and vulnerable, and I cried with her on some pages while laughing with her on others.

[jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

“For years I tried to make it make sense. If I could, then maybe I could tell the story straight. Maybe some part of me wanted to reach into the past and rip the page out. Or maybe I wanted to write the story anew. Like, this isn’t a tale of trauma; it’s one of repair. Or maybe, it’s a story about how trauma makes us do wild things.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
In full transparency, this was always going to be a book that I would love—I’ve been a fan of Roza’s art for a while and I have a few of her pieces on my office wall. But the beauty of her writing, and the bravery to be so honest in recounting her experiences, made this an easy 5 star rating. There were sections that felt like I was seeing parts of my own story being told, as difficult as that made it at times to keep on going. Reading this book made me feel like I also might have the potential to be that brave; if not today, then someday in the future.

I *highly* recommend this book, especially if you are also a fan of queer voices in the literary world! My social worker heart was truly filled while walking alongside Roza throughout these pages.

[Alex (novelswithalex) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Knopf and Libro.fm for providing me with this ALC.

An honest and vulnerable memoir chronicling the first few decades of this queer Iranian and Canadian artist’s life in exquisite detail. I could almost taste and smell all of the Iranian food, drinks, and scents that the author described, just as I could nearly feel all of the emotions she described. It was fascinating in the mundanity, but as with any life there was something singular about it as well. I am neither Iranian, Canadian, nor from an immigrant family, but growing up queer and Indigenous Latine there was so much that I could relate to in my own ways. I loved reading about the tenderness the author felt and still feels for her family and home of Iran. It truly spoke to me.

[Radhika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roza Nozari's journey to define her self for herself is beautifully written, awkward in places and touching throughout. Trying to settle in as the third daughter of immigrant parents. How her relationship with her father deteriorated with her parents marriage. How her relationship with her mother evolved and devolved and developed as she struggled to define what being Iranian, queer, Muslim, Canadian meant to her.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir from an Iranian-Canadian author who recounts her journey through young adulthood, finding her way to balancing her identity of being queer and Iranian and Muslim, and her bonds with her mom and sisters. The book reveals a slow “accepting of the self” the author undergoes, ending with one of her sisters apologizing for being intolerant when the author came out. Heartwarming, sad, hopeful, and relatable.

[readingwithjaney]

I loved hearing the author’s experience of being Muslim and queer and the difficult intersectionality between those two identities. I think her story is a really important one to share and will inspire many people.

[Elizabeth JP · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m always drawn to coming of age stories of queer women, and Roza’s story did not disappoint. Tracking the lines of generations, navigating faith and belonging, woven into a beautiful package of empowerment and strength.

[Reese]

I don’t like rating memoirs, but I really enjoyed this. I’ve never regretted listening to an author narrate their own memoir!

Thanks to Libro for the early listening copy <3

[Eeeep · Rating 5 out of 5]

what an incredibly well told story of diaspora, mothers and daughters, and queerness. It felt like I lived it all.

[Mahdis Azimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so beautiful and I'm really glad I "cut" my TBR line for it. It was so beautifully written-really captured so many experiences that I've had as a first-generation Iranian living in the diaspora. Looking forward to seeing more from the author

[Malika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cried, I laughed - I don't think I've ever seen myself so deeply in the writing of someone else. So grateful my friend gifted me this read.

[Eliya Morsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply put: I shed tears at the end.

[sigh ra · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really don't know what to say. this book brought out all the parts of me that i've exiled, resulting in over four pages of incoherent ramblings in a google doc. and then to reverse that, i spent some time thinking about all the parts of me that i've embraced. the book itself wasn't emotional, but parts of it propelled me to think about things i've buried so deep in me and in the past. confronting those realities(?) or maybe illusions was hard. and so is writing a book so vulnerable and personal. i hope to bump into roza somehow on the streets of toronto perhaps or to admire her from afar, knowing all these intimate details about her life. i don't know how to feel. memoirs are so deeply personal, i feel privileged to be invited in to someone's life like this. it was a good read overall.

"mothers who yearn for their mothers as they prepare to mother us"

"what she lacked in beauty, she would make up for in smarts and morals. she would be good at being good."

"whiteness became a performance i studied with intensity, obsessing over the mechanics of desirability..." me on pinterest : /

"society's hyper-sexual ideas about queerness had caught up to me, naturally launching me into the only starting point i could come to: a study on the mechanics of queer sex. intellectualization is a masterful way of avoiding the uncomfortable."

"and to be a good woman, i had to be a good muslim. and that would require me to sacrifice my queerness."

"the kindest thing i could do for her and myself was to never tell her. my silence, a gift."

"guilt was less overwhelming that the pain of rejection."

"i had left toronto believing that i could feel more free here. like if only i could get enough distance form my mother's gaze, i could be my whole self. except leaving hadn't made me feel free, any more than my mother's leaving iran had made her feel free...it was an act of faith: returning home without knowing whether things would be better-but believing in the possibility of it."

"i was hopeful that what was once wreckage would become a beautiful ruin." - i feel the same about ottawa, the bahamas and banff, they are all beautiful ruins : )

"in my family, there were no road maps for returning to ruptures and repairing. you just moved on."

"that not all love stories end in togetherness; but still, they are love stories-worth honouring with as much care and compassion as one can muster."

"'i'm proud of you. you don't owe me anything. i'm proud of you. i sacrificed for you, yes, but you don't have to sacrifice for me'...that sacrifice does not demand reciprocity."

[just.one.more.paige · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review originally appeared on the book review blog: Just One More Pa(i)ge.

Thanks to Libro.fm for the ALC of this memoir - I was really excited to see it as an option last month and love how quickly I got to reading it!

In her memoir, Nozari does a gorgeous job exploring and communicating her life as the youngest of three daughters in a family that immigrated from Iran to Canada, the only one in the family to not have been born/lived in Iran, and the complexities of her family relationships, connection to her homeland, and her (sometimes tumultuous) journey towards self-acceptance. I was personally really drawn to her reflections on and sharing of her queer identity - coming to acknowledge it, her work to understand it for herself, and her efforts to square that with her cultural and religious ancestry/background. She zigs and zags quite a bit on how to hold all her different identities, and if that is even possible, without denying/minimizing one of them in favor of another, and I found it really affecting. If you read and enjoyed Hijab Butch Blues for similar reasons, I suggest this memoir as a different perspective and final landing place, within a similar set of traditions/circumstances.

In expanding from that one aspect of her identity, her queerness (and coming to terms within the context of her life), to a larger sphere, Nozari's reflections shine as well. As she tries to belong in so many spaces, under the specific rules of each space (Persian, feminist, Muslim, queer), attempting to fit into what each societal gaze wanted from her, she struggled. It took her a long time to find her own self, within the structures and contradictions of all those boxes, and I appreciated her sharing of that experience with readers. Alongside this internal set of identity difficulties, she writes a beautiful meditation on intergenerational inheritances, both the trauma and the potential for healing. Her words on this theme, and how it is inextricably interwoven into the fabric of everything else in her life, is passionate and emotional and soothing, all in equal measure.

All in all, Nozari's writing is incredibly personable. I fell into this memoir so easily, through Nozari’s narration (both the words themselves, and her reading of it). It's comfortable and easy, like listening to stories from an old friend on a weekend coffee date. And aesthetically, I must mention the illustrations. They are vivid with emotion, and do remind me a bit of those in Persepolis, though more introspective in theme/subject matter, given that they are meant to enhance the reading experience, rather than bear the brunt of storytelling (as is the case with Persepolis, it being a graphic novel). In any case, this was a great memoir - soft and powerful - and I really recommend it.

“Between us, grief was like the sun, and joy, the moon. My mother preferred looking at the moon, especially at its fullest. The sun would burn the eyes. Yet like the sun, grief was there in our morning sky, whether we looked at it or not. Grief that is hers, grief that is mine, that is ours, that is historical and collective. Grief that has shaped our relationship and our very personhood, just as joy has. And the more we fervently attempt to avert our eyes and exile the grief, to banish our histories and the selves we once were to the skies, the further we drift away from each other. This is a story of bringing to light historical and personal truths; of finding new familial closeness; of owning our pasts and accepting the people we've been to become who we really are. It's a story of exile and of love."

“I’d wanted to believe that white womanhood could liberate me, deliver me into a world where a brown girl like me could feel wanted. That it could offer girls like Mom and me a chance at human dignity. But it couldn't. Shit, it couldn't even liberate white women. As for so many other women, it was cruel optimism that kept me grasping at any ounce of attention given to me. It was obvious that the worth we yearned for was not going to be found here. We had to look elsewhere. We had to believe there was an 'elsewhere,' out beyond culturally prescribed ideas of human value.”

“That’s the thing about queerness. For some of us, our arrival into queerness doesn't begin with agony and otherness. It begins with quiet tenderness - so quiet, you might miss it if you're not paying attention.” (Never read anything so relatable about queerness in my life.)

“I was learning that to love queer meant being willing to unsettle the norm, to disrupt it.”

“It was one of those times that made you wonder what the difference was between a dream and a prayer.”

"And above all, I learned something new about love, too. That not all love stories end in togetherness; but still, they are love stories - worth honouring with as much care and compassion as one can muster."

“To silently carry these stories home with you, until one day, you feel so heavy with all the stories of heartache and violence, you cannot keep walking. Not for lack of desire or passion, but rather, because humans weren't built to carry that much pain alone.”

“That sacrifice does not demand reciprocity. Its beauty lies in the fact that it's an offering without promise. An offering for the sake of a desired, but not conditional, outcome. It's a gift, not a transaction.”

“…how deeply interconnected our existence is - across generations, across communities. That we are not just connected by our pain and traumas, but also our healing. It was living proof that in living freely ourselves, we give others permission to live and feel their freedom, too. That in healing ourselves, we create space for others to do the same.”

[Mike Broderick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Net Galley for the advance copy of All The Parts We Exile.
Such a wonderful memoir of a woman who is figuring out how to fit in with a world that doesn’t understand her.
This is one of those books that I wish I had taken notes throughout as I will not remember all of the feelings I felt throughout.
As she begins to understand that she is gay, she is torn by her family and faith that does not accept that. Like so many others, causing her to deny who she is to try and be someone who could fit.
I loved how eloquently she described how safe she felt in Iran despite not being able to be herself. The reader could certainly understand the conflict within her.
Another part of the book is through her University years, where she describes the promiscuity and her belief that relationships were about sex. She doesn’t make this out to be wrong for all, but does a great job of describing what it is like to be someone who doesn’t possess the same values but feels pressure to be the same way, all because she is trying to find where she fit in.
Bringing to light the fact that there exists countries that not only makes it difficult to be gay, but actually criminalizes it is an important book to be circulating.
Not a long book, but it packs a punch, with so many more discussion points.
There are points where you will laugh, cry, be angry, be relieved. So many emotions.
I would go 4.5 stars, so this one I’ll bump up.

[Enid Wray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This is a beautifully crafted memoir with a beautifully articulated central concept of exile…. That concept - of exile - runs through this title on so many levels and is applicable to so many individuals.

She weaves her story together piece by piece exploring each of past and present, Canada and Iran, queer and straight, friends and family, gender and patriarchy - to find herself and her place in her family, in the world, and what it means to be a queer Muslim woman.

The writing is lovely, and she is gentle on/with herself and the members of her family. I appreciated the periodic pauses in the text, punctuated with stark black and white drawings that spoke volumes themselves.

This memoir really makes me understand the myriad of ways in which my privilege - as a white, cis-gendered woman, whose family has been in Canada since 1846 and is in a stable, loving heterosexual relationship - makes the world so easy to navigate.

But that is not to say that we don’t have points of intersection in our lives - most notably with respect to violence against women. Even in our difference, there are similarities.

Highly recommended.

[Raina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book showed up on the Toronto Public Library's recommended reads for Pride Month and immediately drew my attention because of the themes. Nozari explores her multidimensional identities as a queer Muslim Iranian Canadian-born, writing about the hardships and joys growing up in the GTA. From confronting whether their various identities are even compatible, to the running theme of the daily armour we build out of survival, to colourful recollections of visits back home to Iran, this book was enriching.

One thing that stood out to me was how genuinely curious and interested Nozari was of her homeland of Iran from a young age. As an immigrant myself, I remember that as a child I had wanted to reject my homeland and assimilate easier into Canadian culture; it was not until early adulthood that I learned to embrace it.

At the heart, there is also a story of a mother-daughter bond that shifts through the decades as both try to understand the other through many phases of their lives. Would recommend to anyone who is interested in these themes.