A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum
(Format used for this read: Print–hardback)
Our latest book club pick and I zoomed thru it…such a gripping story.
Here is the summary:
“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.”
I am BLOWN AWAY that this is the first novel by the author. She crafted SUCH a powerful story about family, cultural expectations, gender roles and being true to yourself.
This story examines the perspectives of multiple women in one family and how they handle the expectations placed upon them of being a woman in the world surrounding them.
Parts of this were super hard to read as there is domestic violence frequently described throughout…but I understood the importance of why the author included this in the story.
The author wrote this story to give voice and visibility to Arab American women and their own personal stories.
In an interview I read with her she describes her own experience with misogyny and oppression in the partriarchal culture she was raised in. Although she is speaking from her own Arab American experience, I think women of many backgrounds will relate to the roles that fear, shame and silence can have in womanhood.
But I think the underlying message of this whole story is the premise of hope…that even though there can be so many things to hold you down there is always a glimmer of light to hang on to that in the future there awaits changes for the better.