A WOMAN IS NO MAN BY ETAF RUM
PAPERBACK PUBLISHED BY HQ 12TH DECEMBER 2019
Three generations of Palestinian-American women living in Brooklyn are torn between individual desire and the strict mores of Arab culture in this heart-wrenching story of love, intrigue and courage.
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.
Set in an America at once foreign to many and staggeringly close at hand, A Woman Is No Man is a story of culture and honour, secrets and betrayals, love and violence. It 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.
MY REVIEW
Congratulations to Etaf Rum taking readers through destinations of Palestnian-American women living in Brooklyn, that steps up about Arab culture.
A Woman Is No Man has lit up as a New York Times Bestseller, and one of Cosmo’s best books by Poc for 2029, and not only that but millions most anticipated books of 2019.
I just can’t believe that A Woman Is No Man is Etaf Rum’s first novel. I won’t share all the details of this of this challenging heart breaking story.
I know that every reader is going to take something away from this story that over whelmed me.
What I connect to here is that it’s very hard writing a 337 page novel with a difference and writing about characters that will capture your imagination and Etaf credit is firmly due here by me.
I really liked the fact that seventeen-year-old Isra loved reading books. After Isra had finished reading a book she placed it under her mattress. Her mind would wonder, thinking to herself, what would it be like to fall in love and most importantly what it would feel like to be loved in return.
Telling her mama I’ve always wanted to fall in love. Isra worried about the ordeal what if the suitor and her don’t love each other. Isra’s mama reveals you think your father and I love each other?
What matters to Isra is that she hopes life in America will be different for women, and hopes that American culture isn’t as strict as theirs, and maybe women are treated better.
This book is in three parts, with characters Isra, Deya, Fareeda
Etaf Rum has provided us readers what inspired her to write A Woman Is No Man is was her two children and the women of Palestine.
I recommend reading A Woman Is No Man, as the praise for it stretches and it will with out doubt keep stretching.
ABOUT ETAF RUM
Etaf Rum was born and raised in Brooklyn , New York, by Palestnian immigrants. She teaches college English literature in North Carolina, where she lives with her two children. A Woman Is No Man is her first novel.
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