You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat

An Entropy Best Book of the Year, Lambda Literary Award Winner and #BookTok Favorite

You Exist Too Much: A Novel by Zaina Arafat

A “provocative and seductive debut” of desire and doubleness that follows the life of a young Palestinian American woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities as she endeavors to lead an authentic life (O, The Oprah Magazine).

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.

About the Author

Zaina Arafat: Fiction & Nonfiction Writer

Zaina Arafat is a Palestinian-American writer. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications including the New York Times, Granta, The Believer, the Atlantic, BuzzFeed, VICE and NPR. She holds an MA in international affairs from Columbia University, an MFA from the University of Iowa and is a recipient of the Arab Women/Migrants from the Middle East fellowship at Jack Jones Literary Arts. She grew up between the US and the Middle East and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Praise

"At once complicated and engaging, this is the kind of debut novel that announces the arrival of a powerful new author who, besides writing beautifully, has a lot to say."
—Gabino Iglesias, NPR

"This story about love, identity, gender and family is brilliantly written and questions the effects of maternal love."
—Good Morning America

"[A] provocative and seductive debut . . . Novels like these don't exist enough."
―O, The Oprah Magazine

"This multifaceted story reflects the ever-tricky journey to finding one’s place in the world."
—Matt Ortile, Esquire

"Her novel is an unlimited space for those whose identities have always been too uncomfortable for society . . . When being a queer Muslim seems too complex for the world to handle, You Exist Too Much is a testimony as otherwise. There is nothing more of an attestation to our narratives than an LGBTQ Muslim author with a bisexual Palestinian-American main character."
—Zainab Almatwari, Teen Vogue