You Exist Too Much: A Novel
You Exist Too Much: A Novel book cover

You Exist Too Much: A Novel

by
Price
$22.51
Format
Hardcover
Pages
272
Publisher
Catapult
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1948226509
Dimensions
5.79 x 0.94 x 8.52 inches
Weight
15.6 ounces

Description

An Entropy Best Book of the Year "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, NPRxa0"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 "Thankfully we have moved beyond tedious questions about the 'likability' of fictional women, because the most interesting characters rarely are at all times. Arafat's heroine is no exception, but the author writes her with great tenderness and just enough self-aware dark humor to allow readers to become invested in this young woman's efforts to make herself whole." —Erin Keane, Salon "As a narrative with an insistence on revisiting ruptures in memory, and unpacking the trauma therein, Arafat’s novel is a direct resistance to pinkwashing and other homo-nationalistic ideologies, one that centers Palestinian memory and generously unpacks the underlying sociopolitical contexts of Palestinian society for non-Palestinian readers."xa0—George Abraham, Publicxa0Books " You Exist Too Much gets desire at a deep level: where it comes from, how it pushes and tugs, and how it's virtually never just about who it's about. As the narrator pinballs from one disastrous affair to the next, we get more than the chronicle of a young full-blown love addict, but a keen study in how our wants are bound to place, race, gender, religion, psychology, and family. Zaina Arafat speaks for the persistently hungry." ―Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens "What a breath of fresh air! Zaina Arafat takes a familiar figure―the restless, womanizing narrator of many a canonical novel―and reimagines it to mordant and delightful effect. Her queer, Palestinian American, love-addict protagonist is pining mostly for a sense of belonging and purpose. She's a deeply relatable character who beautifully conveys the anguish of trying to figure out a life between categories of various kinds. You Exist Too Much is a moving, irreverent, darkly entertaining novel about the agony of family, the mysteries of romantic love, and the painful work of learning where we stop and others begin. Arafat is a true original." ―Nina Renata Aron, author of Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls Zaina Arafat is a LGBTQ Palestinian–American writer based in Brooklyn. Her debut novel, You Exist Too Much , was selected as an Indie Next Pick for June, and has been praised by O Oprah Magazine , Vogue , Elle , Harper's Bazaar , NPR , LitHub and Good Morning America . Her stories and essays have appeared in publications including Granta , The New York Times , The Believer , Virginia Quarterly Review , VICE , BuzzFeed , Guernica and The Atlantic . She holds an MFA from Iowa and an MA from Columbia, and was awarded the 2018 Arab Women/Migrants from the Middle East fellowship from Jack Jones Literary Arts. She teaches writing at Long Island University and the School of the New York Times, and is currently working on an essay collection.

Features & Highlights

  • 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.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(188)
★★★★
25%
(157)
★★★
15%
(94)
★★
7%
(44)
★
23%
(145)

Most Helpful Reviews

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Captivating & Poignant

You Exist Too Much addresses a longstanding void of queer Arab-American literature. Zaina Arafat takes us through the narrator's multi-layered struggle of self-identity.

On one level, she's a daughter of Palestinian immigrants. Every child of immigrants, myself included, can relate to our narrator's wavering between her inherited culture and American lifestyle. But in this case, her country of origin, Palestine, isn't even recognized by her country of birth, the United States. On a second level, and the crux of the novel, is her bisexual orientation, hardly accepted let alone tolerated in most of the Middle East. And finally, in the third and foundational level lies her relationship with her mother, who embodies the disappointment our narrator feels within herself.

These internal conflicts reveal themselves through our narrator's multiple acts of self-destructive behavior. While she may not be likeable at times, she is very real. The reader follows her through self-exploration, self-reflection, and eventually a version of self-improvement.

The writing is captivating and the storytelling is a page-turner. You won't want to put it down.
7 people found this helpful
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The book cover is way more interesting than the book :(

The book cover is way prettier than the book. I was very disappointed. Weak characters and the protagonist bounced from partner to partner....and did not grow.
4 people found this helpful
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Finding a Place in the World

I finished reading You Exist Too Much several days ago, and have not written about it until now, in part because I have been processing my thoughts. I think ultimately I found it to be a fascinating look at the world through the eyes of a young Palestinian-American bisexual woman. The unnamed protagonist has led a fascinating life even though she is now just in her mid-twenties. She traveled to the Middle East for most summers of her childhood, flitting between her family’s cultural norms and the cultural norms she seeks in the United States. She works as a DJ but is determined to become a writer.

The young woman is constantly in love, often, but not always, with women, and more often than not with women who are out of reach. Even though she has several relationships, she is constantly on the lookout for something more. She is often obsessed with someone for a time, but then moves on, not quite understanding why this is happening to her.

When she tells her mother that she is queer, her mother responds, “You exist too much.” Frankly, I loved that response, because it completely encapsulates this character. The interesting thing is that one could say the same thing about her mother. She exists too much as well, and her relationship with her troubled daughter is fraught with anxiety and volatility. The narrator desperately wants to please her mother, but seemingly is unable to find a balance between her mother’s demands and her own desires.

The most poignant chapters take place at a treatment center, where she is treated for a “love addiction,” whatever that is. It is in this place that the young woman begins to understand who she is, and how her culture and her upbringing has brought her to this place. She begins to resolve some of her risky behavior and consider a path forward for her life.

I particularly liked the review on NPR. This reviewer says, “it offers a messy, multilayered, flawed, insecure character as proof that multi-everything should be a category, because humans are too complicated for every other classification, and multicultural leaves out things like sexuality and mental illness. 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.”

There are some indications that You Exist Too Much has some autobiographical characteristics, because Zaina Arafat has a similar life story. She is currently a writing professor, which is where the book’s narrator is heading. In a very revealing interview, she says that as she created her novel she was “writing her way through it” by which she meant that she “didn’t know what the narrator was going to discover until it was revealed to her. I could only discover that by writing the scenes and reflecting on them off the page.”

Finally, Arafat says that her intention was to explore internalized shame, and shame that is projected on you. This may be the most important outcome of the book. How do we raise our daughters and sons to not internalize those things that are spoken to them that causes shame? How do we create the strength in our children that helps them to grow beyond that internalized shame? You Exist Too Much helps the reader understand that it is possible to grow beyond shame.

Arafat writes of characters who come from the Middle Eastern diaspora. I think that we will expect more great writing from her.
2 people found this helpful
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Buy this book.

A gorgeous, lyrical debut by a brilliant young writer.
2 people found this helpful
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A Millennial novel through and through

This novel has big Sally Rooney vibes. It tells the story of a queer Palestinian-American woman who, after spectacular break up with her girlfriend, heads to Kentucky for love addiction rehab at “The Ledge,” and later to the Midwest to pursue an MFA in writing. All the while this present-day plotline is interspersed with memories of her childhood in the Middle East and America, and of the mother she perpetually disappoints. It took me a few chapters to really fall into this book, but once I got there, I stayed there. It’s touching and often relatable—it seems a strongly Millennial novel to me. Even as you want to scream at the narrator, you can’t help but root for her, too.

Please note that I originally published this review on my blog.
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Yes!

Very well written and intriguing! My book club agrees that this is a 5 star book
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Nothing like it

There's really nothing out there like this book. In the tradition of coming of age novels, this one breaks the mold, soaking us in its protagonist's world. Her intersectional problems include eating disorders, homophobic elders, and a homeland she can't actually live in. A gorgeous voice and book.
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Enthralling and refreshing

What a stunning debut! It is refreshing, empathetic, poignant and endearing and has all the qualities of staying with you long after you are done reading.

This novel reads more like a memoir. The narrator is unnamed. The story goes back and forth in time and follows a non-linear format, which makes the reading experience engaging.

The story is about the Palestinian-American queer woman, her struggle with an eating disorder, and love addiction. It is also about the mother-daughter relationship, about identity, sense of belonging and longing for an unattainable (relationships), and the terrible decisions she keeps on making.

It’s beautifully written and I will definitely recommend reading it.
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very emotional book

There’s a lot going on in this novel, it’s the story of a Palestinian-American girl who is gay. It’s the story of how she came to travel the world looking for her identity. She is stuck between cultures and religion. She knows that her duty is to get married, but she cannot do that and be true to herself. Her struggle with her sexual identity leads her to one-night stands, drugs, and alcohol. Its not a happy story, but there is hope at the end.

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