Title & author
You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat
Synopsis
Zaina Arafat’s unnamed protagonist of You Exist Too Much (Catapult, 2020) spends her entire life-- her childhood spent in the US and the Middle East, later in New York as a struggling DJ, at an addiction treatment center in the midwest, and eventually in Iowa for grad school-- struggling to answer the question: how should she live her life? And who can tell her how to do so?
Who Should Read This Book
Fans of Queenie
What We’re Thinking About
The societal critique of women taking up too much space (especially when discussing women of color and/or queer or trans women)
Trigger Warning(s)
Physical violence, substance abuse, sexism, mental health, racism, homophobia
“How should we live?” is the question that fills every page of Soren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, a philosophical text published in 1843 that pitches the “aesthetic” (hedonism) against the “ethical” (civic responsibility). As Zaina Arafat’s unnamed protagonist of You Exist Too Much (Catapult, 2020) sits on the floor of a Christian-owned bookstore, this is the book she picks up. “Desire in our age is simultaneously sinful and boring, because it desires what belongs to the neighbor,” she reads, before tossing the text aside (Arafat, 120). Yet her entire life-- her childhood spent in the US and the Middle East, later in New York as a struggling DJ, at an addiction treatment center in the midwest, and eventually in Iowa for grad school-- she struggles to answer the question Either/Or poses: how should she live her life? And who can tell her how to do so? Arafat uses Kierkegaard’s question to propel her protagonist’s journey, and as the narrator both reflects upon the past and moves into her future, she discovers that only she, and not those who try to teach her what is good or bad, aesthetic or ethical, can determine the answer.
Growing up, the protagonist learns what is considered to be “civic,” but her core identity is challenged, the “ethical” world unaccommodating. From a young age, “it occurred to me...to question why, as a man, his bare legs were somehow less troubling than mine” (5). The protagonist learns about sexism early on, chastised for wearing shorts while walking through Bethlehem. And in the States, she realizes “even though America is built upon the idea of assimilation, a so-called melting pot, we Arabs stand out” (143). Microaggressions and other moments of racism teach her that whiteness is considered good, that it is prized. And when she realizes she is gay, she acknowledges “to be a woman who desired other women seemed even worse, especially shameful and shocking in its lack of reverence for the male-centric culture. Why would you want to exclude men, the stronger, better gender, from the equation?” (75). The narrator’s identity, her gender, heritage, and sexual orientation, all things she cannot “choose,” are challenged by this objective world and its normative values. Arafat’s character faces unacceptance from her family, country, and community; it’s almost no wonder then that she seeks to find pleasure-- and acceptance-- elsewhere through the “aesthetic” world.
Yet even the “aesthetic” world does not serve the protagonist, as we see through her tendency to make decisions only based on her pleasure. Anna, her girlfriend, “was beginning to resent the way I treated her, the decreasingly little effort I made, the fewer gestures of affection, the amount of time I spent elsewhere” (10). The narrator knows she is not putting the time or energy into her relationship with Anna, yet does not correct her poor behavior. Instead, “sometimes I would catch eyes with someone-- woman, man, I was open to either...before heading to the back room for a hurried and furtive encounter that was at once empowering and exhilarating” (29). Although she’s been in a long term relationship with Anna, she takes it for granted, cheating on her physically and mentally throughout, enjoying the pleasure it leads to. And this desire to seek out pleasure at the risk of being selfish infiltrates the rest of her life. “The less visible I was to her, the thinner I got and the less space I took up in her life, the more likely things were to continue,” she says, reflecting on a past relationship that led to her eating disorder (132). The narrator starves herself, only thinking of the pleasure her continued relationship will lead to, not the harm starving herself will cause in the long run. And with her best friend Renata, it is no different. Despite Renata constantly being there for the narrator, even at the expense of her own peace of mind as she deals with a cheating boyfriend, none of it “mattered to [the narrator] right then. I didn’t bother to pretend like it did” (233). If the conversation is not about her, the narrator does not seem to care; she only serves her own cravings.
However, once the narrator begins to acknowledge her problematic actions and their root cause, making the choice to address them, she finds a balance between Kierkegaard’s two realms. “Who was it I actually loathed?” she wonders; “who was I really judging?” (152). Because the world has failed to accept her identity, she cannot do so either, leading her to take her pain out on others. She’s pushed her own feelings aside, acting out instead of facing them. At the treatment center, she realizes she “just hoped the feelings would go away. But instead they spread like a disease, rushing through my veins and lining my stomach until I felt nauseated” (158). The narrator comes to learn that she cannot squash the pain the ethical world has caused by hunting for pleasure; she has to address the problems, or maybe even make peace with them. And as she makes this choice to address them, she learns “that I enjoy the stability even more than the highs, certainly more than the lows” (243). Our protagonist finds peace in herself by finding the middle road that she carves to live out-- uninfluenced by societal expectations of good versus bad, but also with a newfound understanding of impact, of thinking about others.
You Exist Too Much challenges both societal and personal expectations and actions. And Arafat’s stylistic decision to keep the protagonist unnamed in many ways allows the audience to ask the same question as the narrator as they read. But as we follow the protagonist through her exploration of the ethical and aesthetical worlds, flaws and all, can we help but wonder why it is women (especially queer and trans women and women of color) who are told they take up too much space, that they exist too much or not in the “right” way? “How many [stories] must I write to earn my existence?” the narrator asks at the very end (257). How many times must women relearn and relive, rewrite our identities, goals, and paths to please others? To find acceptance? Why is it we who must change in a world that rejects us and so many other characteristics like queerness, skin color, and untraditional femininity? Why is it always that we are expected to be content with finding a band-aid and crafting our own way forward, instead of digging deep to find the cure? “I am lost in my mother’s possibility, in what could’ve been, caught between her frustrated potential and a desire to fulfill my own” (259). How can we forge our own path, when the world is built upon systems, when our identities are built upon histories, that prevent us from doing so?
“It occured to me in that moment to question why, as a man, his bare legs were somehow less troubling than mine. It was a double standard, a shame I had simply accepted until then. In acquiring my gender, I had become offensive.”
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