Our Arab

A poignant, moving essay collection on the longing and hope of living in diaspora and what it means to be Palestinian today, from the Lambda Literary Award-winning author of You Exist Too Much . Fewer and fewer Palestinians living in the diaspora today have direct experiences of their homeland. How can they maintain a connection to a land so volatile, ever shrinking, and nearly unattainable? And how can a child of diaspora raise a child of diaspora, at a time when Palestinians throughout the world-particularly those living in their homeland-are more vulnerable than ever to censorship, violence, and erasure? Luminous, joyous, and evocative, Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging,and Hope is Zaina Arafat‘s highly anticipated follow-up to her award-winning novel You Exist Too Much. In essays that move from Nablus to the Appalachian Mountains and from Amman to Manhattan, Arafat reveals "in a singularly compelling voice" (Leslie Jamison) that to live in diaspora is to exist in a state of longing: longing to be elsewhere, longing to return home, and longing to know what home is. A call to action and a call to love, Our Arab holds many truths at once-about society, identity, and family-and flashes with radical compassion, fierce pride, bitter loss, and righteous anger, forming an incredibly complex portrait of what it means to be Palestinian today.