Clara Sherley-Appel (CSA): This is Story Behind the Story. I’m your host, Clara Sherley-Appel, and my guest today is Zaina Arafat. Zaina is a Palestinian-American journalist and fiction writer whose work centers the Arab diaspora. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and a slew of other publications. Her debut novel, You Exist Too Much, came out in June, and it’s the topic of our conversation today. It explores the painful sense of alienation that comes with being caught between two worlds and two identities, and the pain of feeling like you don’t belong anywhere. Zaina Arafat, welcome to Story Behind the Story. Zaina Arafat (ZA): Thanks so much for having me. (CSA): So tell me about this book. What was the seed of the story for you, and how did it change as you developed it? (ZA): The story began with a question, which was: Why would something that was off in the distance and unattainable be potentially more appealing than something that was right in front of you and that was attainable? As I was pondering this question and wondering what kind of person, I suppose, would prefer something unattainable versus something attainable, I began by first locating that question in love. And that theme of unattainability plays out in one sense on that level, where the character sets her sights on people that she can't have. And then as I reflected on it more, it spoke to a larger cultural / political reality of being Palestinian, which this character is Palestinian American. And of course for Palestinians, unattainability is… it's just a way of life where you are. We're attaining statehood, attaining self-determination, attaining basic human rights. These things are — and the right to move freely — these things are unattainable, and they are just constantly something that you’re longing for and basically fighting for. So that question of, or that theme of unattainability is really where this book started, and I brought in other larger themes including sexuality and cultural identity; Those were woven in as the question and its investigation grew. (CSA): Tell me a little bit about that theme of unattainability, and you mentioned how it relates to the struggle for Palestinian statehood. Cuz one of the things I find interesting is that the narrator's response to this — the story that you're telling through her love addiction — is very much about the ways that she minimizes herself and makes herself smaller in the world. Can you tell me about that experience and how that relates? (ZA): Yeah, absolutely. As you said, love addiction, right? This is… I was thinking a lot about and exploring what kind of person would set their sights on things that were unattainable. I think it became clear to me that that kind of person might also have impulses towards self negation in a way, because in the case of love addiction you're pouring yourself unilaterally, asymmetrically into another person who isn't even really a real actual person— it's just a fantasy that one has. As I explored it further, it seemed to be just a way to almost take yourself out of the equation, right? Cuz it's not a mutual relationship. And then in the case of… on that cultural level as well, there's this whole denial almost of – I mean not even almost. There's a denial of Palestinian existence, basically, and I think you start to internalize that. And when you internalize some reality in which you're being, your own existence is being fundamentally denied, you start to feel this, you know… your response is to take up less space I think. Or that's one possible response. So these things went together, and of course the character also at some point in her life had an eating disorder, right? (CSA): Right. (ZA): She had anorexia, which is another way to negate ones existence. (CSA): It strikes me as a very painful thing to realize about yourself, too. (ZA): Yeah, I think so, and I think that's part of this characters journey – is realizing that’s how she's proceeding, and part of her struggle, or part of her goal, I suppose… part of the goal that we're watching is, can she be present in a way in a healthy, non-self-destructive way in her own life? (CSA): So let's talk about you a bit Your background is in journalism and you've covered the Middle East and issues of diaspora in nonfiction as well as in fiction. How does the one inform the other? (ZA): How does nonfiction inform fiction and vice versa? (she laughs) I… so as a journalist — yeah, I started as a journalist. That's that's absolutely right. And I found that there were limitations with journalism. One of the limitations is that you're addressing things head on, in a way; where either you're making an argument, or you're just limited to presenting character or subjects within a political context or within some news worthy timely way. And I found that to be frustrating because one thing that I really wanted to do through writing was to subvert stereotypes and and common dominant narratives, particularly about Arabs. What fiction allows you to do is to present characters, take them out of a news cycle, and just show them as three-dimensionalized human beings who have desires, longings, flaws, daily activities — like, things that normalize them, in a way, and humanize them. You can imagine them in any scenario that you choose, So that was how I leapt over into fiction, was butting up against that limitation and really wanting to subvert a dominant narrative. (CSA): It's really interesting to me to hear you describe facing something head-on as being a limitation. What do you think that the more metaphorical treatment or more askance view of what these issues are brings to the table? How does it make it richer? (ZA): For example, I’m Palestinian and I’ve just grown up reading, or just watching, as a million op-eds and a million just pieces of journalism and a million UN resolutions happen in regards to the conflict. And I found I haven't seen any progress. And so, when I say ‘addressing things head on,’ I think I mean, like, the traditional ways of addressing this conflict. I think art is such a… I think art is a form of resistance, and that's part of the impulse of trying to influence that conversation in a different way. But, what… you asked what's… how does… can you repeat exactly the last part about … (CSA): How does it make it richer to be able to tell this through a story instead of head on? (ZA): Oh, right! Back to that common narrative, and the ways that people have sought to address it. I mean, the common narrative has a certain number of stock images that come with it, like the ones that the character sees on television when she's a child in DC. Images of Palestinians throwing rocks, you see things on fire, you see people waving flags, you see coffins that are being carried down the street. You see all these really violent and reductive images, and so by changing the narrative, by fictional… by creating a world in which these are not the only images that you get, I think that's the value that it adds. In the same way that people have a very limited understanding and limited imagery of certain conflicts in the world, and certain countries. And what it takes, I think, to challenge those images is to proliferate the stories around that particular conflict or issue. So, yeah — proliferation of images and stories is the value. (CSA): The narrator in your story You Exist Too Much is never named. Why is that, and what did you want to convey in that choice? (ZA): The reason she’s never named (and that was a choice that I made later in the process of writing the book) was that I felt that it spoke to the theme of…well, so the title of the book is You Exist Too Much, and another way of saying that is, ‘you should exist less.’ By not having a name, she is enacting that imperative, right? Where she's taking up less space on the page, and there are some interactions — some of her romantic encounters and affairs that happen throughout book — in which she has no lines of dialogue at all, or you just don't even hear her speak, and that is to suggest a certain power dynamic within that relationship. Her not having a name is part of that theme of taking up less space and existing less, and her desire to self negate. (CSA): Well before we get too far along, I think we should have you read some from the book and I believe you're reading from the very beginning. (ZA): Yeah! (CSA): Can you set it up for us before you dive in? (ZA): I'm reading from a scene that takes place in, well I guess the first paragraph sets it up, is in Bethlehem when the character is 12 years old, and is visiting with her family and is kind of heckled by locals that are there. So I'll just read for a few minutes. “In Bethlehem when I was twelve, men in airy white gowns sat at a three-legged table outside the church of the nativity. They ran prayer beads through their fingers and sipped mint tea in gold-rimmed cups shaped like hourglasses, steam floating off the surface and up into the bright blue sky. I walked past them with my mother and my uncle as we wandered through the holy city. One of the men called out, ‘Haram!’ Forbidden. For the especially devout among us, it’s haram to eat meat unless the animal has been killed in a specific way. Haram to drink alcohol. Haram for a pubescent girl to expose her legs in a biblical city. It occurred to me then that I wasn’t a flat-chested kid anymore, that curves had begun to appear along the length of me. I was no longer indistinguishable from a boy child. ‘What should we do?’ I asked my mother. I felt a pulsing lump take shape in my throat as I noticed her teeth gritting, her jaw extended and temples shimmering. My great-grandparents’ house was where we were staying, and where all of my clothes were, thirty-six miles and three checkpoints away. I felt myself go cold. I closed my eyes and prepared to receive her reaction — I knew better than to try and preempt it with an apology. All I could do was strategically try to calm myself, to remember that the anticipation was heavier than the thing itself. I should’ve had more sense than to dress in such a way when we were visiting the birthplace of a prophet, albeit not our own. My mother had, and still has, a native’s knowledge. She knows the rules instinctively, in that part of the world, and I only ever learn them by accident. ‘Baseeta,’ said my uncle. It’s okay. My mother looked me up and down. We approached the main door of the church and the men hissed again. My uncle ran the tips of his fingers across his mustache, then looked to my mother and me. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I have an idea.’ We followed him into a gift shop just off Manger Square. He dropped a few shekels on the counter, then asked the shopkeeper if we could use his bathroom. My mother grabbed a Kit Kat off the shelf and tore it open, breaking apart two sticks without a second thought. My uncle dropped three more shekels on the counter. The man pointed toward the back. My Uncle’s master plan was that he would trade me his trousers for my Roxy surfer shorts. He went into the bathroom first, and I could hear sounds of fumbling, his belt jangling as it hit the floor. He opened the door slightly and handed his pants to my mother, so she could administer the swap. She then stood in front of me while I took off my shorts. ‘Yalla,’ she said, her most frequently used word. Hurry. I pulled on the pair of pants. They sagged on me. I had to tighten the belt buckle all the way up to the last hole and then roll the waist so that they wouldn’t fall off, leaving me completely exposed. I stepped out of the bathroom and looked at my uncle. I examined my new curves against his pasty legs, gangly and covered in sporadic patches of hair, my shorts tight against his thighs like boxer briefs. It occurred 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. But as I stood in front of him, an unexpected pride began to swell inside me. I liked the way his trousers made me feel. Seen. Like I could get attention from boys, from girls. I felt, for once, seen.” (CSA): That was a lovely reading, thank you. (ZA): Thank you. (CSA): Most of the action in this book takes place in New York, and then in an addiction treatment center somewhere in the Midwest. But it opens here in Bethlehem; Why is that? (ZA): Because one of the main themes of the book…well, it begins there for two reasons. One of the main themes of the book is cultural in-betweenness, and exploring the tensions around that, the awkwardness of it, the sometimes pain of it, the alienation of it, and just the humor of it in some ways, right? And so that is part of why the book begins there, and also this scene is a memory, one of the characters memories, and so many of her memories are set in the Middle East. Part of the books… part of the… project, I suppose, of this novel is to show how past experiences — particularly in childhood, ones that may be seemingly insignificant — how much impact they have on a person later on in life. (CSA): It also sets up the relationship between the narrator and her mother, which as we learn through the course of the book is a very contentious one, and a very complicated one. Can you talk to me about their relationship and how it plays into the ways that the narrator struggles with her identities? (ZA): Yeah for sure. Their relationship, as you say, is a fraught relationship and very complex. Part of the tension of the relationship is the fact that the mother is an immigrant and the daughter is first generation. For this character — for which identity itself is a struggle — that divide is so pronounced because it's another element of that unattainability, where the mother represents for her this world that she partly wants to belong to and partly does belong to as a Palestinian. but isn't fully able to attain because she's first generation. And so the mother becomes this almost embodiment of that for her, that of just Palestine. The communication (or miscommunications!) that happen between generations, and then add to that belonging to different worlds, basically, is also something that I wanted to explore. How that mother-daughter relationship gets complicated by the fact that they basically come from different places. To spend the book… part of this narrators journey is to understand her mother and her mother's past traumas and her mother's past wounds and experiences, a lot of which derived from her experience of growing up in — her mother's experiences growing up in Palestine under occupation, in between wars, and to really understand those so that she can arrive at a place of compassion and empathy, and eventually, love. Because the relationship is characterized by love. I think that there's fierce love between them, but there's also a lot of misunderstanding for the reasons that I mentioned. (CSA): I think there's something to be said here around cycles of abuse almost. Right? Like, what you are describing is a set of traumas and abuses that the mother has suffered from being raised in this occupied environment and from the world around her, and it's very hard not to see the narrator's mother as at least emotionally abusive of the narrator herself. Is that something that you can speak to? (ZA): Oh yeah no, cycles of abuse: precisely! I think we often look at things in the vacuum, or just as isolated incidents, and we don't often see the cyclical nature or the larger picture of it. Part of coming to a place of empathy and compassion and love for a person is to understand cycles of abuse, right? Does it justify any form of abuse? No. Does it explain it to some extent? Yes, and part of her time and treatment is to recognize the cycle of abuse that she's a part of, and also the way that she herself perpetuates abuse. Because she does… she can do hurtful things, and that's why, actually. I mean, so the character can behave in ways that are really upsetting I think and like painful to watch and problematic, but as you say: cycles of abuse, right? I can't have her exist in that cycle without her being partly a perpetuator of it . (CSA): How do you tow that line as a writer between explaining it and justifying it, and for character especially who is going through the unpacking of this herself, right? She is towing that line as well. How do you approach it? (ZA): I think that that's the thing about fiction: You can show and not tell. You don't even have to explain, you can just present the scene and in that way, I think that showing what abuse looks like,but also maybe showing the nuances of it. Where it's like: Yeah, the mother can be emotionally abusive. She is emotionally abusive. But yet it's more complicated than that. It doesn't… there are ways into this mother that can, as you say they don't justify it, but they at least explain where those behaviors and the way that she is with her daughter, where they are coming from and why they exist. (CSA): They contextualize it. (ZA): Exactly, they contextualize it. So much of behavior… Yeah, I think that was the goal: to contextualize abuse and locate it within a larger framework. (CSA): So I think that that raises an important question which is: do you see the mother as a villain? Does the narrator see the mother as a villain, or is there something else going on here? (ZA): No. I think that the narrator, for the longest time, doesn't… I mean, I think throughout the narrator does not see the mother as a villain. And so the mother isn't a villain, and the narrator doesn't see her as a villain. The narrator wants something from the mother, and what it is that she wants transcends her view of the mother as being a villain, until there's a breaking point, basically, in which she does recognize and is forced to recognize those darker sides. And, she can't linger in that space for too long; The other side of recognizing the darker sides and accepting them and forming boundaries, so that you're not a victim of them. I think the other side, at least in this case, is to come to a place of compassion while also protecting herself. That's the dual goal: to recognize and protect herself, and to also try and remove herself from this cycle of abuse, mostly so that she doesn't perpetuate it. But also to find compassion, because of the fact that her impulse is to want to be so close to the mother. In this way she can maintain a certain closeness by forging empathy, but also have a healthy recognition of the fact that this is abuse. (CSA): It's like a means of her… she finds a way to get that connection that she's looking for that doesn't rely on the mother doing anything.. (ZA): Exactly, exactly. It's a way to keep the mother close to her heart without allowing her to hurt her heart. ***AD BREAK*** (CSA): This is Story Behind the Story. I’m your host Calra Sherley-Appel, and my guest today is Zaina Arafat. So, changing tacks a little bit, in another interview you said being part of the diaspora could often feel like being part of nothing. What did you mean by that? (ZA): When you are part of a diaspora, you don't belong to the home country fully, and you don't belong to the adopted country fully. And so, by virtue of neither belonging to either fully, you don't necessarily feel like you're a part of both. You can feel like you're a part of neither. You're you're in that part of the Venn diagram that's its own circle that's separate from either side. I think that applies across diasporas, where you don't feel a part of either. You feel like you're in the strange in between place that you're not entitled to claim a sense of ownership or belonging to either place. That's what I'm speaking to when I say that you feel like a part of neither. And of course, in the case… in the scene in the pages that I read, the the fact that the mother has an innate understanding of things, that the character has to receive through her mother but doesn't herself necessarily have access to because of the fact that she doesn't fully belong to the place. I've spoken to people who they say when they are in their home — like if they’re Palestinian like I am, they'll say, like, ‘When I'm in Palestine I feel so American in some way because people other me, and when I'm in America, I feel so Palestinian because I'm other there as well.’ People see you as an outsider in both places. You don't go to Palestine as a Palestinian American; you're not received as a Palestinian, you received as an American. When you're here in the States, you're not necessarily received as an American, you’re received like an Arab, right? It's that's part of the… I think part of that feeling of non-belonging. (CSA): Yeah, I'm really interested in that notion of not feeling entitled, and I think that that's a feeling that a lot of people who are bisexual (who your character also is) also experience that feeling of not being entitled to really call themselves queer, but not being straight. Can you talk about that? Is it a coincidence that she is both bicultural and bisexual? (ZA): No! It's no coincidence that she's both bicultural and bisexual (they laugh). So as you… so, being bisexual, exactly — It's this weird alienation within. It's an alienation because one doesn't feel that they can claim or is entitled to claim or is entitled to belong to an LGBTQ community, because you're not gay enough, in some way. And you're certainly not straight enough, either. So you're also in this in between place. I think that in the book the character is really alienated from any kind of queer community, and even when she tries to approach that she is filled with a lot of fear because of the fact that she's self alienating in some way, but she's also alienated as virtue of being in-between sexually as well, right? As being bisexual. So yeah, it's another level of in-betweenness in which identities overlap and create a feeling of not belonging. (CSA): One of the things that I found really starkly stood out to me, too, is the fact that she doesn't have a community of queer Palestinians, or queer Palestinian Americans that she's really a part of, or that she can go to. (ZA): That’s right. And part of the reason that she doesn't have that community is because she's so full of self-loathing that she struggles and is, I mean, also struggles with internalized homophobia, such that she doesn't feel a sense of belonging to that community because of the fact that she's full of shame about that part of herself. It also derives from that in-between of being bisexual and not feeling like she's entitled to belong to that community. And also her own sense of the way that she sells alienates, even in her career choice. So she’s on her own island for a lot of her life, and a lot of the book. (CSA): How do you see those identities — being bisexual and being bicultural — as interacting for her? (ZA): Well in one way they interact because one part of her biculturalness is far less accepting than the other part of any form of bisexuality, so the tension there between her biculturalness and her bisexuality is the fact that the Palestinian part of her is unaccepting of her bisexuality, and that is obviously one of her struggles, I suppose, or one of the main obstacles for her. And then the other way that they interact is precisely… it's another level of messiness in her life. It’s a tension that's not reconcilable, and the tension that's not reconcilable creates interesting contradictions and interesting situations that she will find herself in. and it creates room for some moments and storylines that are really… not unusual just as much as unique. Because that messiness isn't reconciled. (CSA): So I think that's a really good segue into something that I personally found very interesting; This narrator struggles a lot (as we've talked about) with internalized shame around all of her identities, and that is very messy. It comes out as love addiction, and there have been some readers who have expressed concern that in portraying the narrator's struggles with love addiction, it plays into stereotypes around bisexuality. Can you speak to that? Is there something that you take from those critiques or those concerns? How would you want to respond to them? (ZA): I actually think that…it amazes me to think that by presenting one character who happens to be bisexual and also happens to have this pattern of love addiction… no part of me as a writer would have ever imagined that I would be speaking for all bisexual people. You can't represent every variation of what a bisexual person could look like in one novel; You can only present one variation of that, and of course in this case her bisexuality is also complicated by her biculturalism. One way, I think, of responding to cultural shame or cultural unacceptance like in her case — being Muslim, being Palestinian, and having both her religion and her culture deem queerness unacceptable — her response is… this is what her response looks like, right? It’s how she internalizes that homophobia that's coming at her, and the way that it's projected outward is really destructive in her case. This is just one human example of how a person could respond to external homophobia, and it doesn't represent all the different possible responses to that. Another person could reject that homophobia and feel a sense of pride and enter into healthy relationships right away, but in her case, combined also with her personal history and trauma and abuse, this is how it manifests. So yeah, I never would think this… I never… I mean, my whole goal was to subvert narratives — dominant narratives and stereotypes. (CSA): For me as a bisexual person myself, I go into this and I see a lot of these conversations. There's a lot of fear in the queer community about portraying our messiness, about portraying the ways that we maybe… I mean, sometimes the ways that stereotypes do reflect, if not our actual deep rooted fundamental beliefs, some of the internalized beliefs that we've taken, and the way that that impacts us, and that it hurts us. There is a lot of pain there. There is a lot of internalized homophobia in our community, and it does seem like it's important to discuss that. However there is so much pressure to present only the perfect view. Do you feel that, and where do you think it comes from? (ZA): Of course! It comes from the lack of narrative. There’s so few, that I felt that always. As a Palestinian, you have to present — in any external presentation of a Palestinian, this has to be 100% positive, because it's like you cannot… we’re already so maligned in the media and misrepresented that you don't want to quote unquote “add to that.” At the same time, part of subverting those depictions is by presenting a fully rounded three-dimensionalized version, not some glorified or even victimized version. I think the same is true when it comes to queerness, and I think that the way around this problem of what we're talking about, or this pressure, is that we need a proliferation of narratives. There just need to be way more stories. Because of course there are plenty of stories about a straight white person, and nobody is worried that he might misrepresent somebody who's straight and white and such. And, as such, change or shape people's views around what a white straight person is — because there's so many different narratives around that feature, that kind of person. So because there’s so few that feature characters with marginalized identities, there's so much more pressure. But not one story can tell all the stories, so there need to be many, many, many more stories. I feel as though now there has been more of a proliferation of stories that feature gay and bisexual characters and trans characters, and I think that's really fantastic because it creates room for more varied narratives, in which you don't have to (at the same time) be a spokesperson. You can just tell a story. (CSA): So on that note, are there other queer authors or Palestinian American authors or the confluence of that who you are inspired by, or who you would recommend people who would like to read more? (ZA): Sure. Randa Jarrar is a queer Palestinian writer whose work has been inspiring to me and meaningful. George Abraham who is a queer Palestinian poet, his work has been really meaningful to me as well. In terms of queer writers, there have been a lot lately that have been really influential to me: Meredith Talusan, who has a memoir out called Fairest about her experience as a trans woman of color is really… Actually we were in a writing group together. I think it was kind of nice the way that we were able to share work, and derive a lot of strength and inspiration from one another. And then, who else? There are… Garth Greenwell, Carmen Machado, T Kira Madden… all of these writers that have, in the last few years, really helped to proliferate these narratives, I think has been really helpful. Just thinking back to what you're saying, I think having to portray Arab characters or queer characters all in a certain light all the time, and have them be paragons of representation is its own form of oppression, to be honest. Because it limits what you can write, and what you're allowed to do or show or say and I think that— (CSA): — or be. (ZA): Or be! Exactly. (CSA): You talked a little bit about this earlier but the title, You Exist Too Much, is very evocative. What does it mean to you, and why of all the lines in the book did you choose this one for the title? (ZA): I chose this line because it speaks to both levels of this characters… both realities that she faces on a daily basis, and just both levels that the book exists on — which is that personal level and then the collective cultural level. But I chose that line to really get at the heart of her struggle, for one thing, which is this impulse to exist less (for some of the reasons that we talked about). I think it just really contextualizes it. It really gets at the complexity of all the themes, and it's almost the intersection, in some way, or the Nexus of all the themes that are happening in this book on the level of identity and culture and sexuality. And it's just something that's so many people that are in between, or that are grappling with identity in some way, I think can relate to. That's why I chose it as the title. (CSA): So you must get us a lot of questions about this book from readers: What are some of your favorites? (ZA): This book comes out on Tuesday, actually. (CSA): Oh sorry, I thought it came out in a couple of days! (ZA): No, it actually comes out on Tuesday, so haven’t yet gotten, but I'll get back to you and tell you what some of the questions are that I get! But so far I have one question: why is she so difficult to watch, and so self-destructive. And my answer to that is because that's what her, this form of internalized homophobia and internalized shame looks like, and how it manifests. It's not always pretty, and that's the reality of it. I mean, more than her being quote unquote “likable,” I wanted her to be authentic and true to her past and her traumas and her joys and her family and all of the things that would shake out, how would they actually, in reality, manifest? Versus in some version of the book in which I had to make her adhere to something likable, right? Cuz that would have been false. I wanted her to the right thing or to choose a healthier option, to behave in a certain way that I found to be less destructive, but I couldn't control her. I mean I really genuinely couldn't control her. Even if I wanted to. It was… the character did really take on a life of her own, and I had to respect that. And eventually I think there are times in which she does, and that's… those are the moments when I feel proud of her. I think that's one of the main questions that I have faced, so far. But once the book comes out I imagine I'll face more questions. Oh, also! One other last question is why are there so many flashbacks that are woven in, and they're not always explained. The point of that is to show how past experiences can have such an impact on one's present self, and I trusted that just by seamlessly weaving them in, the reader could grasp the way that an incident in the present was triggering and memory in the past, and that memory in the past was meant to speak to the present action. ***AD BREAK*** (CSA): (ZA): (CSA): This is Story Behind the Story. I’m your host Clara Sherley-Appel and my guest today is Zaina Arafat. I like that you described her as difficult. I was thinking of that friend who is always asking for your advice and you give it and they never take it, and you’re just like, I want to shake you! Which is very real to how it feels to read this book, cuz you're hearing it from her point of view, and so you are getting those kind of post hoc justifications of her actions as they're happening. But I love that phrase, I love the idea of people being difficult and especially of there being difficult women in books. Are you drawn to difficult women yourself? (ZA): Yeah of course. Totally. In literature? Yeah, often. Franḉoise Sagan, I don’t know if you’ve ever read her, but all of her characters are difficult women, and I love that. And I think Lauren Groff also writes women that are difficult. They're just not easy, and I love her writing as well. So yeah, of course I'm drawn to that because they're just so… They demonstrate more agency on the page. (Clara laughs) (CSA): What's surprised you when you were writing this book, or what did you learn from the process of it? (ZA): Two things: well, so what surprised me was the way that the story and the characters — all of the characters, really — took on a life of their own, and I never knew what they were going to do next. I would stop writing in the evening, and I would go to bed really excited to wake up and write again to see what they were going to do next, and the fact that I just had to follow them and really couldn't… they just had so much agency, which is what I would hope for them. That was really surprising to me, as is the fact that over the course of writing this, so much of the process involved stepping away and just letting the book marinate in my mind and then when I would return to it, however long later, just seeing what had changed — which was often a lot. Or what epiphanies or insights I was bringing to it. And I think maybe the most important thing I learned from writing the book… was that writing a book is really hard. (both laugh) I think I learned that no matter the quirks and the wounds and qualities that people have and where those come from… the goal, at least for me as a human, is to try and find that point of empathy or that space that allows for love, really. (CSA): Are there characters in this book that you had trouble empathizing with at first? (ZA): Yeah, I mean including…I empathize with the narrator once we had a deeper sense of her wounds. I empathized a lot with her. And then I think some characters that I had a harder time… Greg! Who's in treatment with her and who is, at first, really abrasive and obnoxious, as well as her roommate there, who is homophobic. I had trouble empathizing at first with those characters, but by writing through them I was able to arrive at a place of empathy and understanding for them. Just contextualizing their backgrounds and their experiences allowed me to do that. And the mother! I think the mother could be hard to find empathy for at times, but then when I got to the chapter in which I wrote from the mother's perspective, I felt like that was when I really was able to forge empathy for her. (CSA): So I don't want to be too presumptuous, but at least superficially you share some of the experiences that the narrator has had; not all of them, for sure. Did you find the process of writing through this and maybe reopening some of your own wounds — was that cathartic? Was it painful? Was it all of the above? (ZA): The things that I… it's not… it's a novel, so it's fiction. And the things that I do, as you say, share with her are like, yeah I'm Palestinian American, and I identify with her sexuality and her cultural background. I think that was a lot of the impetus to write a book like this as well, was to see that embodied in a character, and to see that reflected out back: A clear Palestinian American which I've seen very few of in literature. But the storyline itself — none of that was from life. But it was cathartic to write through some of the scenes that were more really directly tied to culture. Like the issues surrounding that cultural in-betweenness, or the tensions around — (CSA): — liminal space. (ZA): Exactly. Similarly with her sexuality and there's a scene where she reflecting on a lot of the homophobia that she's faced in her culture, and even in the States as well, and I think that that was cathartic as well. So yeah, in those moments there was a catharsis. (CSA): So you're launching this book in June, in the middle of a pandemic, and a great deal of social unrest in the United States and worldwide. What is that experience like for you How does it feel? (ZA): The moment that I realized that the pandemic was going to effect…that my book was going to be launching during a pandemic — I felt an immediate calm, because I had no control. At the same time as that date approaches, I feel it's hard because it's alienating to be living in a pandemic in many ways. You can't really… you don't have access to your community as much as you normally would. So that's been a struggle, but there have been other ways that I've found around that, and other ways that I've been able to maintain community even without… even while socially distancing. But of course the overhanging fear and tragedy — that weighs a lot. And then the recent protests have been so… what's been happening, why people are protesting is terrible; The police brutality and violence and it's been… it's horrific, and at the same time it's been so inspiring, especially as a Palestinian to see that people are resisting in such great numbers. But it's also just a dark time. And I think I'm just trying to keep persisting forward, and to just carry through in the midst of all of that. I guess it's already stressful to release a book into the world, but you add a global pandemic and global protests to it, it becomes a little more tense, but… (CSA): Where do you personally go for comfort, in literature especially. (ZA): I read a lot of books that I've reread for comfort. I read poetry a lot for comfort, actually. Or prose poetry as well; authors like… Maggie Nelson is really comforting, and I really like Eula Biss as well, and I was just reading On Immunity and I found it comforting. A lot of Gray Wolf authors, actually. That press puts out some really comforting books. So yeah, I'll read books that I've read before; that comforts me. (CSA): I can see that. What do want readers to understand about the Middle East and about diaspora communities? What do you want them to take away from this book, and what do you want them to understand more broadly? (ZA): I want them to take away the fact that diaspora communities are made up of human beings; that they're not this monolithic entity that can either be viewed as threatening or tragic or other in some way, but they're just made up of individuals who have just as much agency and just as much dynamism and just as much backstory and history and complexity as anybody else. I think that that's part of what I would want readers to take away from this book. And to also understand their specific experience of what it's like to be a community within a larger community that you don't naturally belong to. (CSA): I understand that you're working on a collection of essays right now What can you tell me about that project? (ZA): It’s a collection of essays that goes deeper into exploring the reality of diaspora communities through individual human narratives that exist across the spectrum in terms of backgrounds of those individuals. But they all for now, most of them are centered around our diasporic communities. But there's a lot of variation within Arab narratives so that's what that collection is. Yeah. (CSA): Well thank you so much for joining me today Thank you so much for having me who's been lovely To learn more about Zaina or to order a copy of her book, visit zainaarafat.com. Catch STORY BEHIND THE STORY on the first Friday of every month from 5-6pm, during the second hour of Talk of the Bay, right here on KSQD 90.7 FM. To share your thoughts on this or other shows, drop me a line at clara@ksqd.org. THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY is produced for KSQD 90.7 FM by me, Clara Sherley-Appel. Our sound engineer is Lanier Sammons. He also wrote our theme. MUSIC: Mashrou Leila, “Icarus”