The book is a humorous memoir, with reflections on refugee policy and being ‘not quite one of us.’ A
purpose of the book is to delve into how refugees survive and thrive in a strange new country and to better
understand the long-term impact of historic trauma. The book also aims to shed light on shifting
perceptions of being Jewish in Aotearoa. It moves between the personal and the political; the ridiculous and the profoundly serious and between past and present.
The book is Beaglehole’s family’s story and her community’s. However, in several sections, she turns to
history and to her imagination to fill in gaps in her memory of events and people of long ago. How to be an
Alien begins amidst the chaos of revolution and counter revolution. A family must make an urgent decision
to leave, or not to leave, their country. On a winter night in 1956, a mother, father and their daughter step over the barbed wire fences at the border in Hungary and make their way to Austria. No one knows what
the future holds, not for the family who have escaped a tyrannous regime, not for the grief stricken grandmother left behind.