An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice

Khizr Khan

Oct 2017 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Khizr Khan

About this audiobook

This “moving [and] wonderful” memoir by the Muslim American Gold Star father, captivating DNC speaker, and 2022 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient is “a story about family and faith [that] can teach all of us what real American patriotism looks like” (The New York Times Book Review).
 
“[Khizr] Khan offers a valuable perspective as we continue to debate what kind of country we want to be.”—The Washington Post (Best Books of the Year)
 
Khizr Khan electrified viewers around the world when he took the stage at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. And when he offered to lend Donald Trump his own much-read and dog-eared pocket Constitution, his gesture perfectly encapsulated the feelings of millions.
 
In this urgent and timeless immigrant story, Khan shares the extraordinary, ordinary journey that led him to that moment: He was the oldest of ten children born to farmers in Pakistan. He was a university student who read the Declaration of Independence and was awestruck by what might be possible in life. He was a hopeful suitor, awkwardly but earnestly trying to win the heart of a woman far out of his league. He was a loving father who, having instilled in his children the ideals that enticed him and his wife to America, tragically lost his son, an Army captain, in the Iraq War. He was and is a patriot, and a fierce advocate for the values enshrined in the American system. 
 
An American Family shows us who Khizr Khan and millions of other American immigrants are, and why—especially in these tumultuous times—we must not be afraid to step forward for what we believe in when it matters most.

About the author

Khizr Khan was born in 1950, the eldest of ten children, in rural Pakistan. He moved to the United States with his wife Ghazala, in 1980. The couple became American citizens and raised their three sons in Silver Spring, Maryland. Their middle son, U.S. army captain Humayun Khan, a graduate of the University of Virginia and its Army ROTC program, was killed in 2004 while stopping a suicide attack near Baqubah, Iraq. He was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. Khizr Khan holds a BA degree from Punjab University, an LLB from Punjab University Law College, and an LLM from Harvard Law School. He is a member of the bar of the United States Supreme Court; the Washington, D.C., State Bar; the New York State Bar; and the American Bar Association. The focus of Khan's legal practice is on complex civil litigation, electronic discovery, health privacy compliance law, and civil rights and veterans' rights advocacy. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022. He and Ghazala live in Charlottesville, Virginia.