You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat
Category: Political
Tags: Political, Adults, Lesbian, LGBT
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 mothers response only intensifies a sense of shame: You exist too much, she tells her daughter., Told in vignettes that flash between the US and the Middle East, Zaina Arafats debut novel traces her protagonists 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. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that i
