A review by hilaryreadsbooks
Guapa by Saleem Haddad

5.0

Saleem Haddad’s GUAPA happens just over the course of a day in an unnamed Arab country, begins with the moment Rasa’s Teta catches him in bed with another man, ends with the aftermath of a wedding for an old classmate that he has been dreading. All the while, Rasa loses himself in his thoughts, haunted by an increasingly violent regime, an opposition he has fallen out of love with, his parents, the list of eib and sins he has committed (eib translated to shame, though as an interpreter Rasa is quick to tell us it means so much more than that). Haunted by the man he loves who refuses to promise their future together. Haunted by the ways he feels betrayed by everyone and everything around him (including himself)—how being gay and Muslim and Arab makes him an outsider no matter where he goes: here, America, even the hidden space behind shuttered windows and closed doors where he thought he could be his authentic self. 

GUAPA is such an important and incredible read for many reasons, one being how it examines under harsh light American exceptionalism, saviorism, and Orientalism in the U.S.’s rhetoric and policy around Arab countries. At one point, as he reflects on his studies in America, Rasa wonders: “And so what did it mean to be Arab now, under America’s harsh gaze? What is Arab or Muslim if not a fabrication, one invented and reinvented by politicians who engineered meaning behind these words to suit their history.”