You exist too much
Subtitle: a novel
By: Zaina Arafat
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2020
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781948226516
Copyright date: 2020
Subjects: Palestinian American girls; Fiction; Lesbians
Description: 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