HANE SELMANI
Author
THE BOOKS
I am currently working on three books. I have included some chapters here. I hope you enjoy them.
A Country Called Brooklyn
Blood Feuds, Family Honor & My Sisters Murder
"My family had come to America in 1970 with hopes of freedom, not assimilation. That was for the weak. We were Shqiptarë – People of the Eagle – Albanians! The greatest of them all. Life was good and then my sister was murdered and my world fell apart.
My brother set out for vengence and my mother hired a hit man. What had gone wrong? In an effort to understand the world in which I was raised and the reason my mother blamed herself, I embark on a journey into the childhoods of my sisters and mother in the mountains of Albania, valleys of Kosova and the streets of Brooklyn. I discover four strong women, suppressed by tradition, me and each other. This story of arranged marriages, blood feuds, and betrayal ultimaely take place in A COUNTRY CALLED BROOKLYN and demonstrates how understanding the root of one’s beliefs can lead to self-empowerment.
Walking Backwards
Arranged Marriages, Honor Killings & My Quest for Freedom​
Mom made Xharije marry someone she did not want and lost her life to that very man, so you expect that she will treat me, her last child, differently – she doesn’t. She is set in her ways. Starting at the age of sixteen (and my preparation to be a wife), to my marriage at nineteen, to my divorce on my twenty-eight birthday. I risk being disowned, or worse, disgracing the family. My understanding of love goes from lust, to realizing my unconscious attractions to unavailable men because of the abandonment issues I developed when my father died, to my search for a healthy relationship – that is if I can overcome the brainwashing that I must be with an Albanian man.
Chaseing Infinity
Angels, Demons & My Search for God​
"Who you marry and when you die is written on your forehead the day you were born," my mother told me. I believed her, but when Xharije was murdered I began to question God.
Starting with my father, Lutfi, in the Albanian Mountaintops as a war hero who escapes communism with his family in search of freedom. He makes the best of every situation, touching the lives of all the people he meets. He memorizes the Koran but teaches us that being a good person is better than being a religious one. He dies when I am eleven.
in my forties I learn that Xharije’s son, Esat, had died. I go back in time to learn how he wound up on America’s Most Wanted. One would easily judge him as evil but nothing is as it seems as I discover while recounting his experiences of his mothers murder, and his father's influence .