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A Novel
by Etaf Rum
Book Reviewed by:"Garnering justified comparisons to Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns... Etaf Rum's debut novel is a must-read about women mustering up the bravery to follow their inner voice." —Refinery 29
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A Washington Post 10 Books to Read in March
A Marie Claire Best Women's Fiction of 2019
A Newsweek Best Book of the Summer
A USA Today Best Book of the Week
A Washington Book Review Difficult-To-Put-Down Novel
A Refinery 29 Best Books of the Month
A Buzzfeed News 4 Books We Couldn't Put Down Last Month
An Electric Lit 20 Best Debuts of the First Half of 2019
A The Millions Most Anticipated Books of 2019
In her debut novel Etaf Rum tells the story of three generations of Palestinian-American women struggling to express their individual desires within the confines of their Arab culture in the wake of shocking intimate violence in their community—a story of culture and honor, secrets and betrayals, love and violence. Set in an America at once foreign to many and staggeringly close at hand, A Woman Is No Man is an intimate glimpse into a controlling and closed cultural world, and a universal tale about family and the ways silence and shame can destroy those we have sworn to protect.
"Where I come from, we've learned to silence ourselves. We've been taught that silence will save us. Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of—dangerous, the ultimate shame."
Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband Adam, a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children—four daughters instead of the sons Fareeda tells Isra she must bear.
Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra's oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda's insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. Deya can't help but wonder if her options would have been different had her parents survived the car crash that killed them when Deya was only eight. But her grandmother is firm on the matter: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man.
But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths about her family—knowledge that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, the past, and her own future.
While A Woman Is No Man ends on a hopeful note, overall it’s a pretty sad tale; Isra obviously suffers from worsening and untreated depression, and she is treated brutally by those around her. Still, it offers a nuanced picture of a woman’s life within a traditional Arab-American family, and as such it’s definitely worth a read. The book is highly recommended for those interested in learning more about the culture, and book groups in particular will find much fodder for discussion...continued
Full Review
(630 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
The term "Arab" designates those who share a specific cultural, linguistic and in some cases political heritage. According to the Arab American Institute (AAI), the Arab world is comprised of the 22 countries that make up the Arab League, an organization formed in 1945 to represent the interests of Arabs worldwide. The nations (Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen) had a combined population of 420 million people in 2018.
The 2010 United States census estimated that there are some 1.7 million Arab Americans living in the country, although the AAI (among other sources) ...
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[A] brave debut [that] underscore[s] the economic and political challenges that contribute to the victimization of women…. Throughout this heart breaking yet inspiring novel, reading, the forbidden pleasure, offers an alternative sense of community and a safe place for dreams. In that tradition, A Woman Is No Man contributes its own gratifying and immensely healing salve.
