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The Radio 2 Book Club with Zaina Arafat

Zaina Arafat joins Jo for the latest edition of the Radio 2 Book Club to discuss her debut novel, You Exist Too Much.

Zaina Arafat joins Jo for the latest edition of the Radio 2 Book Club to discuss her debut novel, You Exist Too Much.

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: β€œYou 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 β€œlove 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.

Zaina Arafat is a LGBTQ Palestinian-American writer based in Brooklyn. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications including Granta, The New York Times, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, VICE, BuzzFeed, Guernica and The Atlantic. She holds an MFA from Iowa and an MA from Columbia, and was awarded the 2018 Arab Women/Migrants from the Middle East fellowship from Jack Jones Literary Arts. She teaches writing at Long Island University and the School of the New York Times, and is currently working on an essay collection.

1 hour, 57 minutes

Last on

Mon 30 Nov 2020 19:00
ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 2

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Music Played

  • The Jam

    A Town Called Malice

    • Jam Story.
    • Universal.

  • Miley Cyrus

    Prisoner (feat. Dua Lipa)

    • Plastic Hearts.
    • RCA.

  • Jamiroquai

    Virtual Insanity

    • Walk On - Hits From The Last 2 Decade.
    • Columbia.

  • Billie Eilish

    Therefore I Am

    • CD Single.
    • Darkroom/Interscope Records.

  • ±Κ±π±τΓ©, Rodrigo y Gabriela & Fatboy Slim

    Acredita No VΓ©io (Fatboy Slim Remix)

    • Acredita No VΓ©io (Fatboy Slim Remix).
    • 1.

  • Radiohead

    No Surprises

  • Jade Bird

    Headstart

    • (CD Single).
    • Glassnote Music.
    • 1.

  • Fats Domino

    Jambalaya

    • The Best Of Fats Domino.
    • Liberty.

  • The Chicks

    March March

  • The Lathums

    I See Your Ghost

    • Ghosts.

  • The Band

    The Weight

    • The Hits Of 1968 (Various Artists).
    • MFP.

  • Khruangbin

    Time (You And I)

    • Dead Ocean Records.

  • X‐Press 2

    Lazy (feat. David Byrne)

    • (CD Single).
    • Skint.

  • beabadoobee

    Winter Wonderland

  • The Drums

    Let's Go Surfing

  • Gregory Porter

    Mister Holland

    • All Rise.
    • Decca Records Jazz France.

  • Sam Smith

    The Lighthouse Keeper

    • The Lighthouse Keeper.
    • Capitol Records.
    • 1.

  • Annie Lennox

    Dido's Lament

  • Sheryl Crow

    All I Wanna Do (Radio 2 In Concert 50, 1999)

  • Phoebe Bridgers

    If We Make It Through December

    • If We Make It Through December.
    • 1.

  • Bright Eyes

    First Day Of My Life

    • SADDLE CREEK.

  • Sam Fender

    Winter Song

    • Polydor.

  • Sigur RΓ³s

    HoppΓ­polla / MeΓ° BlΓ³Γ°nasir (6 Music Session, 18 Oct 2013)

    • (CD Single).
    • EMI.

  • S. J. Hawkins

    I Put A Spell On You

    • Halloween Hits (Various Artists).
    • Rhino.

Broadcast

  • Mon 30 Nov 2020 19:00
    ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 2