You Exist Too Much

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.