Love Is an Ex-Country

I thank Catapult for this ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a bracing, upfront book. Jarrar maintains her sense of humor, a firm grasp of irony, and a deeply observant eye. I admire her strength and her clear-eyed gaze despite and/or because of her harrowing experiences. Importantly, she kept a sense of joy and nurtured out-of-the-box quirkiness and creativity.

Her memoir recounts her hunger for life and for liberation beyond various oppressors and naysayers. The writing here is also poetic and keenly crafted in equal measure. She is fearless and unapologetic.

I enjoyed her two previous fiction titles and her wry and on-point tweets. She has written some of the most imaginative stories I've ever read. With her memoir, I can further appreciate Jarrar's creative voice.

I read this book during the 2020 elections and its aftermath. And this book helped me have a sense of hope. Her last chapter had an ending that was forgiving and loving; it touched me beyond description because Jarrar could have been righteously depressed and worn down but she wasn't. She chose her own path and made her own light. I will read more of her works.

"Love is an Ex-Country" by Randa Jarrar is a memoir about how author's experience with and interrogation of living and traveling in societies that continuously negate her intersecting identities. Even though this novel centers around a road trip, this book covers the entirety of the author's life from growing up in an abusive home to being in an abusive relationships to her path to becoming a writer. Much of what Jarrar experiences in her life in regards to her abusive relationship with various men in her life are really difficult to read, but I think it is important to hear these stories to bring awareness to the trauma that people experience behind closed doors. This is definitely an interesting memoir that is worth reading.

LOVE IS AN EX-COUNTRY is an intimate collection of essays and reflections framed around the physical and mental journey of a road trip.

Jarrar writes: "Sexuality, pain, love, obedience, hurt: all are woven together in the loom that is my body, that is my skin and my heart." And this book twines together all these components in a way that was unexpected but deepened my appreciation for Jarrar's self-reflection. She is unabashedly fat, queer, Arab, and sexual in this book, intentionally "heretical" with explicit sex scenes and in-depth understandings of her femme and fat body, simultaneously a fuck-you to the father of her past who feared and punished her for her sexuality as well as a relenting forgiveness for the same father worn down now by Parkinson's.

Road trips typically scream nostalgia and happy endings of driving into the sunset, but Jarrar ends one of her essays admitting, "I had almost crossed the entire country, and I felt nowhere near home"—leading the reader to reflect on the ways Jarrar's identities are marginalized in America and Israel.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this advance reading copy, out February 2021, in exchange for an honest review.

Wow, what a powerful memoir. I appreciated her thoughts and experiences as someone at the intersection of faith and queer identity. That's a difficult place to be, and she navigates it with courage and grace.

Love Is an Ex-Country is an honest memoir detailing the dynamic (and sometimes messy) life of a queer, fat, Muslim, Arab American woman.

With beautiful prose, Jarrar weaves readers through her life - from harrowing experiences in airports to humorous sexual encounters - rawly grappling with the aforementioned elements of her identity. Her writing is honest, observant, often funny, and from a perspective that readers rarely get. As a result, I sped through this book in two sittings.

That said, I do think that pitching this book as a travel memoir is a little disingenuous. I'd hesitate to say that travel is the primary, or even secondary, focus of this book - so if you're looking for this emphasis, you may be a bit disappointed. It's still a worthwhile read - but know this going in.

LOVE IS AN EX-COUNTRY is a powerful memoir by Randa Jarrar. At times funny and moving, this book is set against the backdrop of a cross-country round trip after the 2016 election. She writes about the intersection of her different identities: Muslim, Queer, Fat, Arab-American, Abuse Survivor. She describes her journey to acceptance highlighting important relationships and events in her life. Her father was abusive, both physically and emotionally. Her mother was complacent. Her boyfriend is abusive and controlling, and leaves her once she has the child he did not want her to abort. The two areas which I found most interesting were her journey with her body acceptance and the complexity of her race and how she is perceived. She is a fat woman, and she discusses multiple instances where people are outright hostile to her, including her father. But she also talks about acceptance she has come to as she has gotten older, especially in the kink community, and the importance of consent (which she did not see in past relationships). And as for her ethnicity, she highlights discrepancies when she is identified as white (cop being nice to her after pulling her over for speeding), versus Arab-American (her landlord recommends she put up an American flag in her front yard). Jarrar deals with a lot of heavy topics with candor and wit, and I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Catapult for providing me with an advance reader copy for review.

Love is An Ex-Country is a memoir that loosely follows a cross-country road trip, but along the way gives insight to trauma in early life, surviving abuse in relationships, experiences of young motherhood, and claiming sexuality. Once of the most unique aspects of this book is its structure: written in vignettes within each chapter that shifts in time—-a moment on the road connecting to her research, leading to a moment of childhood—-a cyclical style of writing that mimics memory and highlights the often fractured narratives women of color live in the pursuit of their agency. She places the reader at the center of her intersections, Arab/woman/queer, and shows us the ways she is never allowed to forget. She writes: “It is to be reminded in your bones, your muscles, and the twisted strands of your DNA, every moment of every day, of war, of fear, of explosion, of discrimination, of others’ fear, dehumanization, and murder, of you and of people like you.”

As Jarrar turns her care to herself rather than others, she pulls back the curtain so many WOC allow to blind their vision—the burdens that cultural norms, womanhood, motherhood, submissiveness can be. She brings each of these lessons in glaring light, not afraid of brashness in the effort to tell the truth, claim it, and be able to move forward. She refuses to shrink into any prescribed notion of who she should be, in person or in writing, the freedom of which is celebrated in her sexual expression.

Through BDSM and kink, Jarrar reveals the glory in mutual consent, how the articulation of boundaries, desires and fears breaks down the binaries we construct ourselves with. She describes the ownership of her body, the power to “feel every moment and be in the present completely.” This shift in perspective celebrates the joy in physical exploration so many women don’t allow themselves because imposed roles and patriarchal rule.

This book was....exactly what I needed. It's fantastic and poignant and so well written. It gave me a sense of hope, and a sense of solidarity. I couldn't think of a better book to read a time like this, when so much is uncertain and so much is changing. She navigates her identity, her relationships, and love with such wisdom and grace, and it is so far from a cliche. Going to recommend this to everyone I know!

I think this was the real life story I was looking for during this crazy time. While diving into heavier topics, it is done in a lighter way then you would expect. The author's journey became part of my own, when exploring fat positivity and queerness and in turn i learned more about the racism that is experienced by Muslims still and more about the difficulties of growing up an immigrant. It is an easy story to love and some will find every reason to hate a woman that loves herself. Highly recommended.

This memoir was very hard to read sometimes but I think it’s a story that needs to be told. There were some beautiful moments and some heart wrenching moments that made my heart hurt for her. Just a warning though some of the trauma she describes is disturbing and can overwhelm you. This story is not for the faint of heart

This book had me conflicted. I protested the entire time - that the book in front of me was absolutely not what I expected - but was unable to actually stop reading it. Love is an Ex-Country begins as, what seemed to me, a compilation of essays, kind of like think pieces, which drew from Jarrar’s life but were not centered around her. But they were?! Jarrar’s writing is captivating. She knows how to tell a story that leaves the reader both satisfied and longing for more. I absolutely would not call it a memoir of a cross-country road trip but I wasn’t disappointed reading it. Jarrar touches on several themes - physical abuse, relationships, identity, fatphobia and lots of sex. Her account, simultaneously gritty and humorous, offers perspective and is thought-provoking; a read that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Randa Jarrar, the author of “Love Is an Ex-Country,” is complicated. She was born in Chicago to refugees parents—her father an abusive Palestinian and her mother a submissive Egyptian. All her life, she’s continuously encouraged (mostly by men) to shrink—physically, emotionally, racially. But she cannot. She is bold and loud, exuding confidence, wit and strong (abrasive) opinions.

She writes: “Sexuality, pain, love, obedience, hurt: all are woven together in the loom that is my body, that is my skin and my heart.”

Passing for white, Jarrar grew up “on the move.” She’s lived in Egypt, Kuwait, Connecticut, California, Michigan and Texas. She’s an accomplished writer and tenured professor. And she’s a self-described fat woman (size 22), a proud Arab, a libidinous queer and a twice-divorced mother.

In her memoir, Jarrar shares widely on a range of topics. And, boy, does she go there, tackling relationships and belonging, trauma and shame, politics and systemic racism, sex and kink. She also shares what it’s like to be a magnet to abusive men, to be on the run as a refugee and what it’s like to feel erased. In her stories, there’s joy and pain, and she doesn’t hold back about either emotion.

One story in particular was very enlightening. She spoke about sneaking out as a 17-year-old (to meet a boy) only to return home to be horribly beaten by her father. (A frequent occurrence). “So I left. What I learned from this was that no one would ever want the burden of caring for me, of healing me, not for the next 20 years, not ever. I had to do everything myself. Later, I understood that we all do.”

Special thanks to Catapult for this advanced readers copy, via NetGalley. This is my voluntary review.

Thank you to Catapult and NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available.

Jarring and honest, Love is an Ex Country is Randa Jarrar's exploration of identity - both physically and emotionally. Inspired by an Egyptian dancer, Jarrar decides to trace her journey throughout North America. Each location delves into Jarrar's life, both past and present. This book does go into some really heavy subjects including childhood abuse and trauma, domestic violence and racial trauma.

What I enjoyed was Jarrar's candid tone and her resolution. Yes she did experience horror and yes she did experience targeted racial violence. But she kept fighting and eventually found a moment of peace with her abuser, with her audience, within herself. Reading this book was almost like going to therapy myself & finally being seen and understood. I thank Jarrar for writing with such beautiful, sparse and touching prose.