LGBTQ+ Queer Fiction Book Club - You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat

QUEER FICTION BOOK CLUB!

Our next read will be ‘You Exist Too Much’ by Zaina Arafat

Synopsis:

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. 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 and obsessions with other people.

Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as "love addiction." In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.

Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings: for love, and a place to call home.

Amazon Link

At the end of the meeting we will set the next book, based on ideas and feedback from the group, giving everyone two months to read the book. All the books will be LGBTQ+ themed, by LGBTQ+ writers, or with themes likely to be of interest to LGBTQ+ people and communities.

Please read the book ahead of the meeting and come with a view to share your opinions and views.

If you would like to attend but are unable to afford the book, please email Chris on [email protected] who will be able to help out.

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