You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat: Book Review

Hey there, bookworm. Thanks for stopping by. I spent another cozy Sunday on the couch finishing up a book that hasn’t made me feel this way in ages.

On a quest to learn everything I can about the Palestine-Israeli relationship I thought why not consult the gentle teacher of fiction (click here for an article on more book recommendations).

I eventually chose Zaina Arafat’s debut novel, You Exist Too Much because of the title. The allusion too Palestine’s relationship with Israel is clear but I instinctively knew this would be a journey of selfhood. You Exist Too Much. I was drawn by this heavy phrase that evoked emotions that were all too familar. Existing too much. Ouch. But we all know the feeling, don’t we?

A Brief Summary

Post-break up, a young woman checks herself into a rehab facility after learning she is struggling from something called a love-addiction. Knowing she needs to break her toxic cycles of cheating, obsessing over unobtainable people and looking for love while simultaneously barring herself from it she begins the healing process.

In this coming-of-age novel, we are submerged in the confusion of living in two contradictory societies (Palestine and the USA); the tortuous cycle of chased-then-lost lovers but above all the inheritance of trauma and how we can unknowingly pass it on to those we love.

Here are some things I took from this book.

It’s the idiosyncracies of culture that keep me an outsider, and leave me with a persistant and pervasive sense of otherness.
–You Exist Too Much, Zaina Arafat

1. Where do I belong? The Identity Question

It’s ironic to feel like you can exist too much when you fall under the “minority” category. This is the case for our protoganist— a queer arabic woman living in America. As a black girl who grew up in white-dominated spaces, this confused identity and misbelonging is resonant. The feeling that everywhere you go you’re supposed to shrink yourself as much as possible is a strange and insidious social programming. Call this shrinkage what you will: assimilation; social correctness; not wanting to make a scene— whatever it is, it’s somehow engrained that a person’s otherness should be hidden.

“I enjoyed occupying blurred lines. Ambiguity was an unsettling yet exhilirating space.
–You Exist Too Much, Zaina Arafat

I love this quote. At that moment the protagonist has just put on boys’ pants so she can enter a mosque. When she puts them on she feels a sense of security in her androgyne. It made me think to myself— is this what fluidity (gender fluidity, sexual fluidity etc.) is at the end of the day? Is it the safety of camoflauge? The freedom to move unboxed and therefore unrestricted? Is it giving yourself the right to just…be?

2. Passing on Your Trauma

This novel is a brilliant rendition of how we inherit trauma and pass it on to those we love when we don’t deal with it. It’s a story of a woman trying to take ownership of her pain and identify it’s deep-seeded source. She is also forced to confront the hurt she has inflicted on other people and realize that her self-absorption is somehow an escape of her true self. Its weird. When reading there are times you feel like you’re really in the mind of a narcissist. But maybe that is narcissism… Unresolved trauma.

If my mother was Hamas —unpredictable, impulsive and frustrated at being stifled —my father was Israel. He’d refuse to meet her most basic needs until she exploded. Then he would point at her and cry, “Look at what a monster she is, what a terror!”
You Exist too Much, Zaina Arafat

3. The Ugly Human …

There were many moments in the novel where I didn’t like this protagonist. She is too morally flawed, too twisted. And not in the DC comics villain way that we like. In a way that’s real. She makes us think, “wow…could I also be this stubborn,” “was I also this blind?” “am I also this damaged?” However beauty and ugliness are entwined. There is nothing more real than loving a person after knowing the ugliest parts of them. It’s like morning light seeping through the holes of ripped curtains. The curtains still hangs, it still sways with dignity— and the light still shines.

5. Healing takes time

Fight of flight? We use this term when we’re in romantic relationships but what about the relationship we’re in with ourselves? Fly from your demons or fight them. The protagonist spends 28 days summoning her demons and understanding how they were born. When she left the facility she knew that she wasn’t “cured.” She knew that curing herself would take work and time.

All in all…

This book is written by a deeply honest writer. One that clearly drew from the well of her own experience. The truth and vulnerability pours onto the pages and confronts me like a mirror confronts a heavy conscience. It tackles the conflict of identity, encouraging us to approach our complex reality with grace and understanding. It teaches us that becoming a better person is a process and a conscious state of mind. We need to choose it each time. And sometimes we will falter, but we pick ourselves up again and do better next time.

In The Light Room