Belonging can feel natural for some people and endlessly complicated for others. In her debut memoir, But Where Are You Really From? – Foreign there, Foreign here: From Kosovo to Denmark, Lena Rexhepi shares what it means to build a life across languages, borders, and competing ideas of home.
When a Familiar Question Feels Personal
The question in the book’s title is one that many people with immigrant backgrounds recognize immediately. It often arrives during an ordinary conversation, inspired by a person’s name, appearance, accent, or heritage. Its deeper message can leave someone wondering whether years of living, studying, working, and contributing will ever be enough to earn a complete sense of acceptance.
Lena places this question within the story of her own life. Born in Ferizaj, Kosovo, she was nine years old when the Kosovo War forced her family to flee in 1999. The memories of that period include displacement, refugee camps, fear, and the sudden loss of a familiar childhood.
Her family eventually reached Denmark, where a new chapter began. Copenhagen became the setting for her education and personal growth. Learning the language and understanding Danish culture gave her ways to participate in society, yet her connection to Kosovo remained deeply rooted in memory, family, and identity.
The memoir captures the emotional complexity of carrying these two realities at once. Lena can return to Kosovo and feel changed by her years abroad. In Denmark, she can still be viewed through the label of immigrant. That experience creates the unusual feeling described in the subtitle: foreign there and foreign here.
Through thoughtful storytelling, she shows that displacement continues beyond the movement from one country to another. It can influence how a person speaks, remembers, forms relationships, responds to prejudice, and imagines the future.
Creating Opportunity From an Uncertain Beginning
A major part of Lena’s journey involves her commitment to education and independence. She goes on to earn a master’s degree from Copenhagen Business School and builds an international career in finance and the pharmaceutical industry. Her studies and professional work take her across Europe and the United States, with experiences in cities such as London and New York.
These accomplishments reveal her ambition and willingness to enter unfamiliar spaces. They also expose her to new versions of the same questions about origin and belonging. Professional success offers greater freedom, though it cannot shield her from racism, discrimination, or assumptions connected to her immigrant background.
Lena writes about navigating workplaces as a woman whose identity does not always match conventional expectations. Some difficulties appear openly, while others surface through subtle barriers, passing remarks, and judgments that can be difficult to explain to people who have never encountered them.
Her perspective gives the memoir value beyond one individual life. Readers are encouraged to consider how social systems and everyday behavior affect those who are repeatedly asked to prove their place. Migration becomes a human experience filled with ambition, fatigue, hope, adaptation, and the desire to be treated with dignity.
The book also allows space for love, failure, womanhood, and personal reinvention. Lena does not present growth as a simple journey toward a perfect destination. She examines the choices, doubts, and experiences that shape a person over time. Her vulnerability makes these reflections relatable, even for readers whose lives look very different from hers.
Language, Memory, and the Meaning of Home
Throughout the memoir, home appears as something larger than geography. Kosovo lives in Lena’s early memories and cultural inheritance. Denmark is connected to growing up, education, career, and the life she worked to establish. Malmö, Sweden, is where she currently lives, adding another place to her evolving understanding of belonging.
Language holds these worlds together. The book is available in English, Danish, and Albanian, and Lena wrote and translated each edition herself. This choice reflects the multilingual life at the center of her story and helps the memoir reach readers across the communities that shaped her.
But Where Are You Really From? is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback formats. Its personal approach makes subjects such as war, racism, migration, and cultural identity feel immediate. Readers see how history can remain present in someone’s body and how a childhood language can continue to carry memories across decades.
About the Author
Lena Rexhepi is a writer, storyteller, and former child refugee with an international background in finance and pharmaceuticals. She has volunteered in Denmark, Kosovo, Malaysia, and Singapore. Lena also produces and hosts the podcast But Where Are You Really From?, where she explores identity, belonging, culture, and the experiences that shape people between worlds.
Finding a Place Within the Story
This memoir offers an honest portrait of a woman claiming her voice across countries and cultures. Lena’s story invites readers to approach questions of origin with empathy and to recognize that home can exist in memory, daily life, and the courage to define oneself.
