Our Arab by Zaina Arafat

Our Arab

On Longing, Belonging, and Hope

Zaina Arafat

Little, Brown and Company · Print & ebook · Forthcoming

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.

Buy on Amazon

We earn from qualifying purchases.

Who it’s for
Essays consider how diaspora shapes Palestinian identity, family, and the meaning of home.
Genres
Essay Collections, Arab & Middle Eastern Lives, Immigration & Emigration
Published
Little, Brown and Company, Forthcoming

About this book

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. Of the many Palestinian Americans in the diaspora, few have direct experiences or memories of their ancestral land, if any at all. So how does one maintain a connection to a home so volatile, ever-shrinking, and nearly unattainable?

Continue reading

And how does a child of diaspora raise a child of diaspora, at a time when Palestinians throughout the world—particularly those living in their homeland—are vulnerable to massive violence? Our Arab is Zaina Arafat's highly anticipated follow-up to her critically acclaimed novel You Exist Too Much, with essays that coalesce around the fundamental characteristic of living in diaspora, the state of longing: longing to be elsewhere, longing to return home, and longing to know what home is. This is a book that holds many truths at once about society, identity, and family, filled with flashes of radical compassion and anger and forming an incredibly complex portrait of what it means to be Palestinian today.

Palestinian Diaspora

Essays consider how diaspora shapes Palestinian identity, family, and the meaning of home.

Come here for

  • Palestinian American life in diaspora
  • Longing for home, return, and belonging

Expect

  • Reflections on raising a child in diaspora
  • Longing, hope, compassion, and anger held together

Where it sits

Essay Collections84%
Arab & Middle Eastern Lives35%
Immigration & Emigration34%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Arab & Middle Eastern Lives
  • LGBTQ+ Lives
  • Essay Collections
Authors
Zaina Arafat
Publisher
Little, Brown and Company
Published
Forthcoming
Format
Print & ebook
Reading lane
Arab & Middle Eastern Lives