Our Arab
On Longing, Belonging, and Hope
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Oct 20, 2026
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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.
One of The Chicago Review of Books' Most Anticipated Books in Fall 2026
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"One way to mitigate the pain of a shrinking homeland... is to find yourself in an expanded world," writes Lambda Literary Award–winning novelist Arafat (You Exist Too Much) in this outstanding portrait-in-essays of the Palestinian diaspora. In "Palestine Has a Cold," Arafat travels to the Middle East with her pregnant wife and toddler with plans to visit her family's hometown of Nablus, only to decide the danger is too great and realize that, "sometimes, to see a place most clearly, you must be outside of it." The title essay recaps Arafat's father's year as an exchange student in small-town Minnesota in the 1960s, where he was embraced and voted onto the student council and homecoming court, and Arafat's discordant experience joining him on a trip to his class's 50-year reunion in a post-9/11 world. In "Angry Arab Woman," she considers how Arab women are denied access to their own rage through her experience as the lone Palestinian voice on a 2023 panel about the war on Gaza. Throughout, she explores her own psyche, detailing minute reactions and feelings that emerge from her daily life, relationships, and personal milestones, but that also intertwine in unexpected ways with the maddening reality of living in a world that refuses to acknowledge the daily crimes perpetrated against her people. Clarifying and powerful, this probes at the wounded hearts of Palestinians in exile.
