Zaina Arafat’s highly anticipated debut novel You Exist Too Much is a candid story about a young Palestinian-American woman who struggles with bisexuality and love addiction. Her Arab-Muslim culture in which she grows up further complicates her intense longing for romantic connection and queer identity. Zaina was joined in conversation by Zibby Owens, creator and host of the “Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books” podcast.
“For anyone who’s ever felt their body or identity takes up too much space, this deeply affecting story of doubt and love is a gut-punch and a solace.” —Elle, 1 of 30 Most Anticipated New Books of the Summer
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You Exist Too Much
By Zaina Arafat
Published by Catapult
On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: “You exist too much,” she tells her daughter.
Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East—from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine—Zaina Arafat’s debut novel traces her protagonist’s progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as “love addiction.” In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.
Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings—for love, and a place to call home.
