New Addition to the JARRARCHIVE!
Love Is An Ex-Country
Available Now!
Most Anticipated book of the year: Time Magazine, Esquire, O: The Oprah Magazine, Autostraddle, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, The Millions, Colorlines, Lithub, and more.
“[B]eyond violence, Jarrar writes about pleasure and healing, and her own power with the same ferocity . . . This memoir is deeply literary, but she breathes new and hilarious life into what I thought was possible when writing about being an immigrant, an Arab-American, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a traveler, and most of all, a body—or, as she puts it, a “queer fat body.” – Neelanjana Banerjee, Harper’s BAZAAR
“Love Is an Ex-Country… demands a re-landscaping of America. The American excursion is a transnational one, and for Jarrar, a Palestinian refugee, the question of country is omnipresent.” – Kyubin Kim, ZYZZYVA
“Jarrar [positions] herself both as a critic and as a participant in the conversation about which stories, and whose, receive exposure. It’s a vivid and necessary point of view.” ––David L. Ulin, Alta
“[Through] her intimate look at how she’s moved past abuse, Jarrar stakes out a radical approach to self and citizenship, one that hinges not on someone else’s approving judgment but on her own self-love .” — Leila Mansouri, The Believer
“Love Is an Ex-Country is not a road trip memoir so much as a profound meditation on race, borders, abuse, and above all, bodies. Everything is seen, felt, experienced through the lens of the body, and the reader will feel it in theirs, too.” ––Sarah Neilson, Shondaland
“Jarrar, a single mother who was born in America but raised in Egypt for a spell, brings a fresh, critical perspective to the road narrative genre, which is largely dominated by white men. In the backyard of America, the proudly fat, queer, Muslim and Arab American protagonist dredges up personal demons she triumphed over, and unaired grievances from America’s checkered past. —Connor Godwin, The Seattle Times
“There is catharsis in reading Jarrar’s words, they feel alternately like howls and whispers, an impassioned, necessary response to what it means to live in America today.” ––Kristin Iversen, Refinery29, One of the Best New Books of the Year
“Jarrar [positions] herself both as a critic and as a participant in the conversation about which stories, and whose, receive exposure. It’s a vivid and necessary point of view.” ––David L. Ulin, Alta
“[Through] her intimate look at how she’s moved past abuse, Jarrar stakes out a radical approach to self and citizenship, one that hinges not on someone else’s approving judgment but on her own self-love . . . Reimagining citizenship as beyond the reach of hostile judges isn’t a new idea. Indigenous and Black writers, especially, have been doing it for centuries. But Jarrar takes this kind of reimagining to new places by keenly chronicling the everyday ways that the unhealed wounds of abuse can bind even her most mundane bodily movements as an Egyptian, Palestinian, queer, fat, femme, Muslim, Arab American.” — Leila Mansouri, The Believer
“Cutting and triumphant . . . Jarrar [is a] fierce, merciless thinker and writer . . . The memoir itself traverses the globe … with Jarrar’s grit and intelligence leaping off every page. The entire book is a symphony for the pushed-out and the unheard. —Booklist
Buy Hardcover here, Audiobook here
About
A memoir in essays examining joy, queerness, kink, race, domestic violence, and love through the lens of the body.
WATCH RANDA
Randa has appeared in RAMY on Hulu, and in the short films GOT GAME and FINJAN. She is currently writing and developing a feature film.
