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Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope
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? 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 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.
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? 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 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.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published October 20, 2026
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October 14, 2026
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(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
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June 23, 2026I’ve been haunting the shelves of Palestinian exile essays/books in hopes of making peace with my recurring Tuesday identity crisis. Excited for this one! :)
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope is an essay collection by Palestinian American Zaina Arafat. There are glimpses into Zaina's family history, the Palestinian diaspora, her marriage and motherhood. When I choose nonfiction, I do so purposely to learn about people, cultures, and experiences that are not my own. I found the essays moving and the author's voice to be compelling. The writing was thoughtful, and I was engaged from beginning to end. I will leave you with the author's own thoughts to close out my review.
"This book was borne of Edward Said’s notion of the dual gaze of looking simultaneously backward and forward, toward the place you’ve left behind and the place you now inhabit, and the constant state of longing it engenders. It means belonging to multiple places, geographies, and cultures, while never fully inhabiting any one of them."-Zaina Arafar in an interview with Sari Botton, 23rd October 2026, "The Lit Lab"
Publication Date 20/10/26
Goodreads Review 24/10/26
Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for access to this title. I am auto-approved by this publisher. All opinions expressed are my own.
"This book was borne of Edward Said’s notion of the dual gaze of looking simultaneously backward and forward, toward the place you’ve left behind and the place you now inhabit, and the constant state of longing it engenders. It means belonging to multiple places, geographies, and cultures, while never fully inhabiting any one of them."-Zaina Arafar in an interview with Sari Botton, 23rd October 2026, "The Lit Lab"
Publication Date 20/10/26
Goodreads Review 24/10/26
Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for access to this title. I am auto-approved by this publisher. All opinions expressed are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
"One of the greatest aches of exile is that it separates us not just from our homeland, but from our greatest sources of strength—each other. But with these three ladies, I’ve finally created a home of my own, inside of our family."
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be released in the US by Little, Brown on October 20, 2026.
In Our Arab, Zaina Arafat explores how people in diaspora come to know a homeland through memories and stories “tinged with the haze of time and distance.” Rooted in her experience as a Palestinian American, these essays ask how diasporic Palestinians maintain connection to a homeland that is perpetually unattainable, increasingly endangered, and facing violent erasure.
Arafat moves fluidly between family history, cultural criticism, political analysis, and memoir. She traces her family’s journeys between Nablus, Minnesota, Virginia, California, and New York, examining what each generation preserved, surrendered, and rebuilt along the way. Language, ritual, oral history, and shared traditions become ways of rooting a family in time and place. Yet Arafat refuses to romanticize preservation, questioning what stories can accomplish against occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
The collection is especially powerful when Arafat interrogates how Western media robs Palestinians of both land and narrative by presenting their anger without its historical source. She writes candidly about witnessing Gaza through social media, the demand that Palestinians remain civil about their own destruction, and the uneasy distance between watching and bearing witness. Hope and resilience appear not as uncomplicated virtues, but as resources the dispossessed are repeatedly forced to produce.
I was particularly moved by the intersectionality of Arafat’s perspective as a queer diasporic woman. Her comparison between asserting her Palestinian identity and asserting her bisexuality in the face of erasure adds another layer to the collection’s insistence on the right to exist and take up space. Evocative, grieving, and illuminating, Our Arab locates home in family, community, collective memory, and resistance. I am grateful to have read it and to have learned so much about the emotional experience of diasporic longing and belonging.
📖 Read this if you love: Lyrical essay collections, queer Palestinian narratives, intimate explorations of diaspora, or memoirs that blend personal history with political analysis.
🔑 Key Themes: Palestinian Identity and Resistance, Diaspora and Displacement, Bisexuality and Queer Identity, Family History and Intergenerational Memory, Storytelling and Cultural Preservation, Language and Assimilation, Community and Collective Hope.
Content / Trigger Warnings: Colonization (severe), Genocide (severe), War (severe), Cancer (severe), Medical Content (severe), Pregnancy (moderate), Child Death (moderate), Misogyny (moderate), Drug Use (minor), Gun Violence (minor), Parent Death (minor), Racism (minor), Terrorism (minor), Eating Disorder (minor), Alcohol (minor), Injury (minor), Death (minor), Murder (minor), Fatphobia (minor), Vomit (minor), Islamophobia (minor).
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be released in the US by Little, Brown on October 20, 2026.
In Our Arab, Zaina Arafat explores how people in diaspora come to know a homeland through memories and stories “tinged with the haze of time and distance.” Rooted in her experience as a Palestinian American, these essays ask how diasporic Palestinians maintain connection to a homeland that is perpetually unattainable, increasingly endangered, and facing violent erasure.
Arafat moves fluidly between family history, cultural criticism, political analysis, and memoir. She traces her family’s journeys between Nablus, Minnesota, Virginia, California, and New York, examining what each generation preserved, surrendered, and rebuilt along the way. Language, ritual, oral history, and shared traditions become ways of rooting a family in time and place. Yet Arafat refuses to romanticize preservation, questioning what stories can accomplish against occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
The collection is especially powerful when Arafat interrogates how Western media robs Palestinians of both land and narrative by presenting their anger without its historical source. She writes candidly about witnessing Gaza through social media, the demand that Palestinians remain civil about their own destruction, and the uneasy distance between watching and bearing witness. Hope and resilience appear not as uncomplicated virtues, but as resources the dispossessed are repeatedly forced to produce.
I was particularly moved by the intersectionality of Arafat’s perspective as a queer diasporic woman. Her comparison between asserting her Palestinian identity and asserting her bisexuality in the face of erasure adds another layer to the collection’s insistence on the right to exist and take up space. Evocative, grieving, and illuminating, Our Arab locates home in family, community, collective memory, and resistance. I am grateful to have read it and to have learned so much about the emotional experience of diasporic longing and belonging.
📖 Read this if you love: Lyrical essay collections, queer Palestinian narratives, intimate explorations of diaspora, or memoirs that blend personal history with political analysis.
🔑 Key Themes: Palestinian Identity and Resistance, Diaspora and Displacement, Bisexuality and Queer Identity, Family History and Intergenerational Memory, Storytelling and Cultural Preservation, Language and Assimilation, Community and Collective Hope.
Content / Trigger Warnings: Colonization (severe), Genocide (severe), War (severe), Cancer (severe), Medical Content (severe), Pregnancy (moderate), Child Death (moderate), Misogyny (moderate), Drug Use (minor), Gun Violence (minor), Parent Death (minor), Racism (minor), Terrorism (minor), Eating Disorder (minor), Alcohol (minor), Injury (minor), Death (minor), Murder (minor), Fatphobia (minor), Vomit (minor), Islamophobia (minor).
Read
May 31, 2026I'm honored to be a part of the cover reveal for OUR ARAB by Zaina Arafat!
Having spent the past week with this much-anticipated follow-up to Arafat's debut YOU EXIST TOO MUCH, I can say it’s a collection that lingers long after the last page. OUR ARAB is a series of essays spanning from Nablus in the West Bank to Minnesota and Manhattan. As a child of the Palestinian diaspora, Arafat illustrates what it means to exist in a state of perpetual longing for home, for belonging, for hope.
What distinguishes this collection is its range, both geographic and emotional. From the story of her father's high school exchange program that plucked him from his Palestinian hometown and dropped him in Minnesota for a year, to a compassionate essay on what it means to fast for Ramadan while Gaza goes hungry, to reflections on watching a genocide unfold on her phone while starting a family thousands of miles away, Arafat moves between the deeply personal and the political with grace and precision. She demonstrates that for those living in diaspora, these two spheres have never been and will never be separate.
This is an essay collection that asks difficult questions and sits with them honestly rather than reaching for easy answers. Arafat's prose is clear-eyed and deeply humane, and OUR ARAB feels like a vital contribution to the literature of displacement and identity.
OUR ARAB is out October 20th and available for preorder now. Thank you so much to Little Brown for the copy and for having me as part of this reveal, and thank you Zaina for writing this <3
Having spent the past week with this much-anticipated follow-up to Arafat's debut YOU EXIST TOO MUCH, I can say it’s a collection that lingers long after the last page. OUR ARAB is a series of essays spanning from Nablus in the West Bank to Minnesota and Manhattan. As a child of the Palestinian diaspora, Arafat illustrates what it means to exist in a state of perpetual longing for home, for belonging, for hope.
What distinguishes this collection is its range, both geographic and emotional. From the story of her father's high school exchange program that plucked him from his Palestinian hometown and dropped him in Minnesota for a year, to a compassionate essay on what it means to fast for Ramadan while Gaza goes hungry, to reflections on watching a genocide unfold on her phone while starting a family thousands of miles away, Arafat moves between the deeply personal and the political with grace and precision. She demonstrates that for those living in diaspora, these two spheres have never been and will never be separate.
This is an essay collection that asks difficult questions and sits with them honestly rather than reaching for easy answers. Arafat's prose is clear-eyed and deeply humane, and OUR ARAB feels like a vital contribution to the literature of displacement and identity.
OUR ARAB is out October 20th and available for preorder now. Thank you so much to Little Brown for the copy and for having me as part of this reveal, and thank you Zaina for writing this <3
October 26, 2026
I loved this so deeply. There is so much to much beautiful language to enjoy, so many facettes of Arafat’s life to peer into, so much to learn from this about being human, about being part of the Diaspora, about being a mother, about being Palestinian. It is truly brilliant.
I loved each essay. It is fantastic the way Arafat crafts an essay with an anecdote, a story, lots of little details and at the end a final section, final passage or final sentence that brings it all together and shows the reader what she has been talking about.
Especially the essay called “Fasting for Ramadan While Gaza Goes Hungry” was honestly slightly life changing for me. She captures the love of a celebration, a tradition, a connection to family and people that I as a non religious Christian socialised person feel for Christmas and I get it now, it is the same for Ramadan. And this is obvious but I never got it before. This essay is fantastic!
Quotes:
“In the same way, it's often the diaspora's version of the home country that supersedes the actual home country. In the absence of experiencing the territory itself, those of us in the diaspora have created a map based on memories and handed-down stories, all tinged with the haze of time and distance.”
“She kept going, her love for me stronger than her fear, for the children she'd raised in this place, who were now from this place, a world she too wanted to belong to, because her children already did.”
“In the process of listening to my great uncles and aunts share these stories over argileh and bizir on our teta's veranda, of hearing my parents' version of their memories, all of these stories get transformed as they stray further and further from the source, as in a game of telephone. They are garbled by the gaze of time and distance, and most of all nostalgia. Perhaps they are even distorted by necessity: to avoid a white gaze, to avoid scrutiny from an oppressor, from a censor.”
“At what point do we become voyeurs? Are people just watching and not witnessing? To watch is to consume, to witness is to acknowledge. To bestow some degree of legitimacy. But what does it do to see it? Is empathy ever enough?”
-
Quotes from Fasting for Ramadan While Gaza Goes Hungry:
“As I read the news, I think about the special cruelty of killing hungry people. Death ends their misery but forever denies them the relief that they were seeking. Part of Ramadan's joy is the act of looking forward: to iftar, the meal that breaks the fast every evening; to Laylat al-Qadr, the night when the first verses of the Quran were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad; to the feast of Eid, which marks the end of daily sacrifice. How do you celebrate the holy month when you fear the suffering will not end?”
“It's difficult to imagine Ramadan in Gaza now. 1 want to imag ine that, even at a time of devastation and deprivation, a per sonal act of sacrifice can still lend purpose to senselessness.
Maybe it can give powerless people a small sense of control.
When you fast, you can think: I chose this hunger; ir was not forced on me. But maybe that's wishful thinking. Hunger is painful. The only antidote is to eat. And in the same way that food brings people together, I wonder whether its absence kceps us apart. Hunger makes us weak, and not only physically.
It curs us off from the strength that comes from being together.
In Islam, Ramadan is the month during which the Quran was revealed as a guide for humanity. God prescribes fasting as a means of self-discipline, a way to show Muslims what they're capable of and to protect themselves from hellfre. But He is merciful; not everyone is called on to fast, especially if doing so causes harm. The Quran grants exceptions to those who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or menstruating, and to people who are traveling, elderly, or ill. Starvation or PTSD would count as illnesses; fleeing your home would count as travel. These expanded definitions seem almost absurd, amidst a genocide, and maybe they won't matter. Some will choose to fast regard-less. Sometimes the best way to forget one pain is to focus on another.”
-
“And when the entire world only sees the outcome—a sliver of the story—our anger loses its validity, and our humanity is obscured. We are robbed not just of our land, but also of our narrative.”
“Several years previously, rebounding from a breakup, I writhed on the floor as my mom looked at me with pity. "You know, life is going to get a lot harder than a breakup. You should be prepared," she'd said.”
“You decide that it may be time to have some sex, that the weight of someone, anyone, on top of you will provide comfort and validation.”
“It's true that diaspora is marked by randomness. People fung from their countries to places they previously may not have been able to find on a map. Los Angeles, Washington, DC, New York, Grundy-there's nothing intrinsic that binds us to any of these places. Instead, you're left searching for some connection. I often feel like I'm flailing, or longing, or lost. It's no wonder why I am always maybe on my way overseas. One of the greatest aches of exile is that it separates us not just from our homeland, but from our greatest sources of strength—each other.”
I loved each essay. It is fantastic the way Arafat crafts an essay with an anecdote, a story, lots of little details and at the end a final section, final passage or final sentence that brings it all together and shows the reader what she has been talking about.
Especially the essay called “Fasting for Ramadan While Gaza Goes Hungry” was honestly slightly life changing for me. She captures the love of a celebration, a tradition, a connection to family and people that I as a non religious Christian socialised person feel for Christmas and I get it now, it is the same for Ramadan. And this is obvious but I never got it before. This essay is fantastic!
Quotes:
“In the same way, it's often the diaspora's version of the home country that supersedes the actual home country. In the absence of experiencing the territory itself, those of us in the diaspora have created a map based on memories and handed-down stories, all tinged with the haze of time and distance.”
“She kept going, her love for me stronger than her fear, for the children she'd raised in this place, who were now from this place, a world she too wanted to belong to, because her children already did.”
“In the process of listening to my great uncles and aunts share these stories over argileh and bizir on our teta's veranda, of hearing my parents' version of their memories, all of these stories get transformed as they stray further and further from the source, as in a game of telephone. They are garbled by the gaze of time and distance, and most of all nostalgia. Perhaps they are even distorted by necessity: to avoid a white gaze, to avoid scrutiny from an oppressor, from a censor.”
“At what point do we become voyeurs? Are people just watching and not witnessing? To watch is to consume, to witness is to acknowledge. To bestow some degree of legitimacy. But what does it do to see it? Is empathy ever enough?”
-
Quotes from Fasting for Ramadan While Gaza Goes Hungry:
“As I read the news, I think about the special cruelty of killing hungry people. Death ends their misery but forever denies them the relief that they were seeking. Part of Ramadan's joy is the act of looking forward: to iftar, the meal that breaks the fast every evening; to Laylat al-Qadr, the night when the first verses of the Quran were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad; to the feast of Eid, which marks the end of daily sacrifice. How do you celebrate the holy month when you fear the suffering will not end?”
“It's difficult to imagine Ramadan in Gaza now. 1 want to imag ine that, even at a time of devastation and deprivation, a per sonal act of sacrifice can still lend purpose to senselessness.
Maybe it can give powerless people a small sense of control.
When you fast, you can think: I chose this hunger; ir was not forced on me. But maybe that's wishful thinking. Hunger is painful. The only antidote is to eat. And in the same way that food brings people together, I wonder whether its absence kceps us apart. Hunger makes us weak, and not only physically.
It curs us off from the strength that comes from being together.
In Islam, Ramadan is the month during which the Quran was revealed as a guide for humanity. God prescribes fasting as a means of self-discipline, a way to show Muslims what they're capable of and to protect themselves from hellfre. But He is merciful; not everyone is called on to fast, especially if doing so causes harm. The Quran grants exceptions to those who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or menstruating, and to people who are traveling, elderly, or ill. Starvation or PTSD would count as illnesses; fleeing your home would count as travel. These expanded definitions seem almost absurd, amidst a genocide, and maybe they won't matter. Some will choose to fast regard-less. Sometimes the best way to forget one pain is to focus on another.”
-
“And when the entire world only sees the outcome—a sliver of the story—our anger loses its validity, and our humanity is obscured. We are robbed not just of our land, but also of our narrative.”
“Several years previously, rebounding from a breakup, I writhed on the floor as my mom looked at me with pity. "You know, life is going to get a lot harder than a breakup. You should be prepared," she'd said.”
“You decide that it may be time to have some sex, that the weight of someone, anyone, on top of you will provide comfort and validation.”
“It's true that diaspora is marked by randomness. People fung from their countries to places they previously may not have been able to find on a map. Los Angeles, Washington, DC, New York, Grundy-there's nothing intrinsic that binds us to any of these places. Instead, you're left searching for some connection. I often feel like I'm flailing, or longing, or lost. It's no wonder why I am always maybe on my way overseas. One of the greatest aches of exile is that it separates us not just from our homeland, but from our greatest sources of strength—each other.”
August 24, 2026
4.5 stars! Thank you NetGalley for providing me a review copy! I enjoyed this so much! You Exist Too Much is one of my favorite books that I think about often, so of course I wanted to read this before it published. What an accurate and honest depiction of the ache of diaspora that is woven beautifully through these essays. Its through line is a family portrait of multiple generations all reaching for hope and community. My favorite of the essays, all of which are excellent, are” Palestine Has a Cold,” “Witnessing Gaza Through My Instagram Feed,” and “On Writing a Novel on Things Unattained.”
October 29, 2026
A really beautiful meditation on the Palestinian diaspora experience.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
My full review is available here: https://prairiefoxreads.blogspot.com/...
Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope
By Zaina Arafat
Genre: Essays / Memoir / Cultural Criticism
Publication Year: 2026
My Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5)
What Does It Mean to Miss a Place You Have Never Truly Known?
Some books are about home.
Others are about the absence of home.
In Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope, Zaina Arafat explores one of the defining experiences of diaspora: the persistent feeling of being connected to a place that is simultaneously central to your identity and yet physically distant, politically contested, and emotionally elusive.
This essay collection asks difficult questions.
What does it mean to inherit a homeland through stories rather than memories?
How do parents pass cultural identity to children who may never see the places that shaped previous generations?
And how does one sustain hope when the very idea of home feels increasingly fragile?
Arafat does not offer simple answers.
Instead, she creates space for complexity.
For contradiction.
For grief and love to coexist.
The result is a deeply personal work that examines belonging not as a destination but as an ongoing process.
A Life Lived Between Places
At the heart of the collection is the experience of diaspora itself.
Arafat writes from the perspective of a Palestinian American navigating questions of identity, family, memory, and inheritance. Throughout the essays, she reflects on what it means to be connected to a homeland that many members of the diaspora know primarily through stories, photographs, family histories, and imagination.
These essays are not organized around a single thesis.
They are organized around longing.
Longing for connection.
Longing for understanding.
Longing for continuity across generations.
One of the book's greatest strengths is its willingness to hold multiple truths simultaneously. Arafat resists easy narratives and simple political categories. Instead, she focuses on lived experience and emotional reality, allowing complexity to remain intact.
The geopolitical circumstances provide the backdrop.
The human experience provides the story.
A Public Health Perspective: Identity, Displacement, and Belonging
From a public health perspective, Our Arab offers a thoughtful examination of how displacement and cultural identity influence well-being.
Modern public health increasingly recognizes that health extends beyond physical conditions. A sense of belonging, cultural continuity, community connection, and identity all contribute meaningfully to emotional and psychological health.
Diaspora communities often navigate unique challenges.
Questions of language.
Memory.
Cultural preservation.
Intergenerational transmission of identity.
Arafat explores these issues with nuance and sensitivity.
The essays repeatedly demonstrate that displacement is not simply geographic. It can also be emotional and generational. People may feel caught between worlds, connected to multiple places while feeling fully at home in none.
As someone with a public health background, I appreciated the collection's recognition that belonging itself can function as a source of resilience. Communities preserve identity through stories, rituals, family traditions, and collective memory.
These connections matter.
They help people make sense of themselves and their place in the world.
Looking Through an Analytic Lens
What impressed me most about Our Arab is Arafat's ability to write about identity without reducing it to certainty.
Many books seek definitive conclusions.
This one embraces ambiguity.
Throughout the collection, Arafat returns to questions that resist easy resolution.
Can someone belong to a place they barely know firsthand?
Is identity inherited, chosen, or both?
What responsibilities accompany cultural memory?
These inquiries give the essays their intellectual richness.
The collection also examines the relationship between personal narrative and larger historical forces. Political realities are present throughout the book, but Arafat consistently grounds them in individual experiences rather than abstract debates.
This approach allows readers to engage with the material on a human level first.
The result feels intimate rather than ideological.
Curious rather than prescriptive.
Reading This Book as a Woman in Midlife
Some essay collections inform.
Others invite reflection.
Our Arab does both.
As a woman in midlife, I found myself particularly drawn to the essays dealing with inheritance and family. Many people reach a stage in life when they begin thinking more deeply about what has been passed down to them and what they, in turn, will pass along.
Not just possessions.
Stories.
Values.
Memories.
A sense of identity.
Arafat's reflections on raising children within diaspora communities felt especially poignant because they touch upon a universal concern.
How do we preserve what matters?
How do we help younger generations understand where they come from?
And what happens when parts of that history feel distant, fragmented, or uncertain?
These questions transcend any single culture or community.
They are fundamentally human.
More than once, I found myself pausing to reflect on the ways family stories shape our understanding of ourselves.
That, to me, is the hallmark of successful nonfiction.
Strengths and Limitations
The collection's greatest strength is its emotional honesty.
Arafat writes with vulnerability and intellectual rigor, creating essays that feel both personal and expansive. Her reflections on identity, family, and belonging are nuanced and deeply affecting.
The prose is another notable achievement. Elegant without being overly ornate, the writing invites readers into complicated subjects with warmth and clarity.
The thematic cohesion is particularly strong. Even as individual essays explore different aspects of diaspora, they remain connected through the recurring themes of longing, memory, and hope.
Some readers looking for a straightforward political history or policy-focused analysis may find the collection more personal than expected. The emphasis remains firmly on lived experience rather than political argument.
For me, that focus was one of its greatest strengths.
The human story is what makes the larger themes resonate.
Final Thoughts
Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope is a thoughtful and beautifully written essay collection that explores identity, family, memory, and the enduring complexities of diaspora life.
Zaina Arafat has crafted a work that examines what it means to belong while acknowledging that belonging itself is often complicated. Through personal reflection and cultural inquiry, she creates a nuanced portrait of Palestinian identity while simultaneously addressing universal questions about home, inheritance, and connection.
Readers who enjoy literary nonfiction, memoir, cultural criticism, and essay collections centered on identity and belonging will find much to admire here. Book clubs, in particular, will discover rich material for discussion about family, memory, migration, and the meaning of home.
What lingered with me after finishing was not a single argument or conclusion.
It was the recurring sense of yearning that runs throughout the collection.
The desire to know where we come from.
The desire to remain connected.
The desire to build a meaningful home even when certainty remains out of reach.
Our Arab reminds us that home is not always a place we can point to on a map.
Sometimes it is a story we carry.
A memory we inherit.
Or a hope we continue passing forward.
Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5)
Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope
By Zaina Arafat
Genre: Essays / Memoir / Cultural Criticism
Publication Year: 2026
My Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5)
What Does It Mean to Miss a Place You Have Never Truly Known?
Some books are about home.
Others are about the absence of home.
In Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope, Zaina Arafat explores one of the defining experiences of diaspora: the persistent feeling of being connected to a place that is simultaneously central to your identity and yet physically distant, politically contested, and emotionally elusive.
This essay collection asks difficult questions.
What does it mean to inherit a homeland through stories rather than memories?
How do parents pass cultural identity to children who may never see the places that shaped previous generations?
And how does one sustain hope when the very idea of home feels increasingly fragile?
Arafat does not offer simple answers.
Instead, she creates space for complexity.
For contradiction.
For grief and love to coexist.
The result is a deeply personal work that examines belonging not as a destination but as an ongoing process.
A Life Lived Between Places
At the heart of the collection is the experience of diaspora itself.
Arafat writes from the perspective of a Palestinian American navigating questions of identity, family, memory, and inheritance. Throughout the essays, she reflects on what it means to be connected to a homeland that many members of the diaspora know primarily through stories, photographs, family histories, and imagination.
These essays are not organized around a single thesis.
They are organized around longing.
Longing for connection.
Longing for understanding.
Longing for continuity across generations.
One of the book's greatest strengths is its willingness to hold multiple truths simultaneously. Arafat resists easy narratives and simple political categories. Instead, she focuses on lived experience and emotional reality, allowing complexity to remain intact.
The geopolitical circumstances provide the backdrop.
The human experience provides the story.
A Public Health Perspective: Identity, Displacement, and Belonging
From a public health perspective, Our Arab offers a thoughtful examination of how displacement and cultural identity influence well-being.
Modern public health increasingly recognizes that health extends beyond physical conditions. A sense of belonging, cultural continuity, community connection, and identity all contribute meaningfully to emotional and psychological health.
Diaspora communities often navigate unique challenges.
Questions of language.
Memory.
Cultural preservation.
Intergenerational transmission of identity.
Arafat explores these issues with nuance and sensitivity.
The essays repeatedly demonstrate that displacement is not simply geographic. It can also be emotional and generational. People may feel caught between worlds, connected to multiple places while feeling fully at home in none.
As someone with a public health background, I appreciated the collection's recognition that belonging itself can function as a source of resilience. Communities preserve identity through stories, rituals, family traditions, and collective memory.
These connections matter.
They help people make sense of themselves and their place in the world.
Looking Through an Analytic Lens
What impressed me most about Our Arab is Arafat's ability to write about identity without reducing it to certainty.
Many books seek definitive conclusions.
This one embraces ambiguity.
Throughout the collection, Arafat returns to questions that resist easy resolution.
Can someone belong to a place they barely know firsthand?
Is identity inherited, chosen, or both?
What responsibilities accompany cultural memory?
These inquiries give the essays their intellectual richness.
The collection also examines the relationship between personal narrative and larger historical forces. Political realities are present throughout the book, but Arafat consistently grounds them in individual experiences rather than abstract debates.
This approach allows readers to engage with the material on a human level first.
The result feels intimate rather than ideological.
Curious rather than prescriptive.
Reading This Book as a Woman in Midlife
Some essay collections inform.
Others invite reflection.
Our Arab does both.
As a woman in midlife, I found myself particularly drawn to the essays dealing with inheritance and family. Many people reach a stage in life when they begin thinking more deeply about what has been passed down to them and what they, in turn, will pass along.
Not just possessions.
Stories.
Values.
Memories.
A sense of identity.
Arafat's reflections on raising children within diaspora communities felt especially poignant because they touch upon a universal concern.
How do we preserve what matters?
How do we help younger generations understand where they come from?
And what happens when parts of that history feel distant, fragmented, or uncertain?
These questions transcend any single culture or community.
They are fundamentally human.
More than once, I found myself pausing to reflect on the ways family stories shape our understanding of ourselves.
That, to me, is the hallmark of successful nonfiction.
Strengths and Limitations
The collection's greatest strength is its emotional honesty.
Arafat writes with vulnerability and intellectual rigor, creating essays that feel both personal and expansive. Her reflections on identity, family, and belonging are nuanced and deeply affecting.
The prose is another notable achievement. Elegant without being overly ornate, the writing invites readers into complicated subjects with warmth and clarity.
The thematic cohesion is particularly strong. Even as individual essays explore different aspects of diaspora, they remain connected through the recurring themes of longing, memory, and hope.
Some readers looking for a straightforward political history or policy-focused analysis may find the collection more personal than expected. The emphasis remains firmly on lived experience rather than political argument.
For me, that focus was one of its greatest strengths.
The human story is what makes the larger themes resonate.
Final Thoughts
Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope is a thoughtful and beautifully written essay collection that explores identity, family, memory, and the enduring complexities of diaspora life.
Zaina Arafat has crafted a work that examines what it means to belong while acknowledging that belonging itself is often complicated. Through personal reflection and cultural inquiry, she creates a nuanced portrait of Palestinian identity while simultaneously addressing universal questions about home, inheritance, and connection.
Readers who enjoy literary nonfiction, memoir, cultural criticism, and essay collections centered on identity and belonging will find much to admire here. Book clubs, in particular, will discover rich material for discussion about family, memory, migration, and the meaning of home.
What lingered with me after finishing was not a single argument or conclusion.
It was the recurring sense of yearning that runs throughout the collection.
The desire to know where we come from.
The desire to remain connected.
The desire to build a meaningful home even when certainty remains out of reach.
Our Arab reminds us that home is not always a place we can point to on a map.
Sometimes it is a story we carry.
A memory we inherit.
Or a hope we continue passing forward.
Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5)
September 19, 2026
Wow. This was absolutely brilliant. Our Arab is a collection of essays about life as a queer Palestinian woman living in diaspora. I read and loved Arafat's novel "you exist too much" a few years ago, so this has been on the top of my TBR. The essays in this book alternate between personal anecdotes, anecdotes of a generation of the author's family members, and history of Palestine/the ongoing genocide. The central theme is the feeling of longing to stay connected to homeland, despite being thousands of miles away. The idea of searching for "home" and hope and identity, while your people are faced with decades of erasure and displacement under Israeli occupation. Palestinians are robbed of not only their land, but of their own narrative as well. I found these essays deeply moving, especially "Fasting for Ramadan While Gaza Goes Hungry" and "Angry Arab Woman". Arafat is an extraordinary writer and I highly recommend this to everyone. Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!!
November 2, 2026
I’m a sucker for Zaina Arafats writing style. The many dwellings this book has on the meaning of home were very insightful for me. The perspective on diaspora being both a word for a spreading out as well as a word for community was very striking for me. And that thread is carried throughout the essays.
Fair warning anytime I read her books I have something blow up in my personal life, so be weary of that. But even despite that I would reccomend this or You Exist Too Much to anyone.
Fair warning anytime I read her books I have something blow up in my personal life, so be weary of that. But even despite that I would reccomend this or You Exist Too Much to anyone.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Completely brilliant. Zaina Arafat's reflections on the Palestinian diaspora, Arab women's rage, queer motherhood, and more show that her nonfiction writing is just as dazzling as her fiction. I loved every word.
Review of advance copy received from Shelf Awareness Pro
Tes
October 31, 2026
“A long way from home, until they weren’t.”
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