Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope

By Zaina Arafat

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316584681
• ISBN13: 9780316584685
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 224 Pages