By Zaina Arafat
Catapult 2020
260 pages Literary
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.
