The New York Times bestseller and Read with Jenna TODAY SHOW Book Club pick telling 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.
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“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
“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.
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A miraculous accomplishment by a woman who had not written before. But a book so good it could have been written by a seasoned writer. I was not only informed of the conditions of a Palestinian woman’s life, no matter where she lives, but how great a fight she had to have to realize her potential as a human being. Bravura performance. Thank you for writing this book!
This book took me into a new world that was familiar and also unfamiliar. I find myself thinking of it weeks after I finished reading it, which is always my measure of a good book.
I loved this book. Haunting, tragic, heartbreaking, beautifully written. A story of three generations of voiceless Palestinian women. A look into the lives of conservative Arab women living in America. The love of a mother for her children. The struggle between cultural ties and assimilation. The futility of hope. Regret. Courage. Engaging characters.
The book opens in Palestine as Isra is being married off to a Palestinian man living in America. Then the story moves to Brooklyn for the remainder of the novel. I was pulled into the story from the first few pages. The story alternates in perspective – Isra, the main character; Fareeda, Isra’s mother-in-law; and Deya, Isra’s oldest daughter. Following cultural expectations, Deya’s mother was forced to marry and now Deya’s grandparents are trying to force marriage upon Deya, but Deya wants to go to college instead. Deya has been raised to believe that her parents died in a car accident, but into her life comes a stranger who is the catalyst for the collapse of the house of lies Deya has grown up in.
I was so immersed in the story that I could feel the frustration and hopelessness these women felt. The heartbreak when Isra’s mother tells her that love has nothing to do with marriage. The futility when Isra found that life was no better for her in America and that, indeed, Marriage had nothing to do with love. Rum also wrote about the cultural expectations that are placed on the men which often leads them to feeling trapped and taking their frustrations out on the women. Deya even turned to her Islamic studies, looking for an explanation, and was told that “When we accept that heaven lies underneath the feet of a woman, we are more respectful of women everywhere. That is how we are told to treat women in the Quran.” The clash of culture and religion.
I loved how Isra, Sarah, and Deya all found comfort and temporary escape in books. They found hope that they could change their lives.
“She’d been raised to think that love was something only a man could give her. For many years she had believed that if a woman was good enough, obedient enough, she might be worthy of a man’s love. But now, reading her books, she was beginning to find a different kind of love, A love that came from inside her, one she felt when she was all alone, reading by the window. And through this love, she was beginning to believe, for the first time in her life, that maybe, just maybe, she was worthy.” (Isn’t that beautifully written?)
Caution: There are scenes of domestic abuse that may disturb some. This kind of abuse can be found in any culture, now just the culture portrayed in this novel. Portions are very difficult to read, but others are a stunning portrait of hope. If you enjoyed “A Thousand Splendid Suns” you must read this book. Both books featured women who were abused yet proved themselves stronger, smarter, and braver than their men. Yes, indeed, “a woman is no man”. Like “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, this book is sure to linger in your thoughts.
I would like to have given this book a 5-star rating but the ending seemed a bit off, leaving me trying to piece it together. I think you will understand if you read it, and I do hope you will. Overall, it is a superb novel.
I received an early copy of this novel. All opinions are my own.
Very powerful read.
This book addresses a heritage similar to mine. Loved the Arabic and mentions of food. It is a struggle for first generation kids and even immigrants to figure out which culture to follow in America
Well written. A glimpse into the life of Middle Eastern refugees making a new life in the US fighting Westernization of their children.
Sometimes heroism is loud and dramatic. Other times, it is daring to listen to that quiet voice within and have the courage to follow it. In this story, we see inside the lives of three generations of Palestinian women living in America, struggling and suffering to hear that voice. Etaf Rum has done a great service by sharing these voices with us.
A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum is a stunning debut novel that hooked me from page one. With the utterly compelling characters, Rum accomplishes the high-wire act of telling a story that feels both contemporary and timeless, intimate and epic. This is a novel you devour in a few precious sittings, that you press into the hands of friends and family, that lingers in your heart and mind long after the last page.
Etaf Rum’s A Woman Is No Man is a shattering, revelatory tale of immigration, womanhood, and the cyclical impact of violence and oppression. In her unflinching story of both loss and hope, strewn with enthralling, vibrant characters, Rum has accomplished the extraordinary: a tale that bridges the domestic and the global, memory and future, the old world and the new. A spectacular debut.
A Woman Is No Man, bold as a drumbeat, banishes the repressive silence that haunts Isra and her spirited daughter, Deya. This tender tale of women soldiering through a barbed world is a clarion call and a work of literary bravery.
A gripping portrait of three generations of Palestinian women whose narratives are heartfelt and unsettling. Rum writes with tender sensibility, creating characters with layers of complexity and depth. She gives these women what they most desire and deserve: a voice.
I couldn’t put it down. I was obsessed with figuring out the mystery of this family.
Well written account of a family of Arab women’s perspectives of self worth based on the influence of generations of women in their life, which directly influenced each other
Rum’s debut novel is harrowing and inspirational, a glimpse into a closed culture whose codes of honor and shame both bind family members together and threaten to break their hearts. Riveting!
This book had a lot of difficult parts to it, but I can see so much truth in it. It was necessary and even though hard, I am sure it was based on a lot of truth. In the end there were some great redeeming qualities, and to be honest there are always hard things that happen when people begin to strike out in different areas, and freedom is always costly. However maybe another generation will reap the benefits and rewards. Although this was based on a foreign culture, there are still issues in America where women are still treated as less than men. I know of marriages where men still dominate, and of course, in the business world, women are still not compensated equally. All in all though, the book was great.
Author Rum took a huge chance in writing this book. It portrays a first generation Arab American family and the hardships the women face in a tradition life, even here in America. The woman are sensitively portrayed in this book… the grandmother, married so young and raising a family in a refugee camp, a realist perhaps, but one who perpetuates the oppression of women in her own home with her own children and granddaughters. The book explores the daughters of the family trying valiantly to find their own lives and freedom in a country that does not look kindly on Arabs. It was a leap of faith for this author to expose her background in such an open and honest way. The men are abusive, angry, but one realizes life for them is no picnic either.
Stories like this need to be told. Kudos to the author for doing so. However, I never felt a real connection to any of the characters. I felt there was a lot of redundancy in the story. But maybe that’s the point the author was trying to make – a sense that these women are “stuck”. Also, the lack of even one positive male in the book bothered me. The story frustrated me, it made me angry, but it was also kinda boring at times. Overall, I just feel like something is missing from this story.
I absolutely loved this book! The most moving and inspiring story I’ve read in a very long time.
I liked nothing about this book. The story was informative but the same information was presented over and over.
Raw, powerful, revealing, chronicling the lives of a handful of Palestinian women transplanted to an Arab community in Brooklyn. I salute the author for her bravery in sharing these stories.