BOTM Synopsis
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.
My Review 5.0/5.0
Let me preface this review by stating that I knew nothing about the Palestinian culture before reading this novel. In Etaf Rum's first novel, I was entranced by the culture of an unfamiliar land to me. Through three generations of characters, the author does a remarkable job of defining courage. It was a beautiful testimony of how culture can be shifted over time by those who are a part of it. This novel is full of powerful women with even more powerful stories. Rum tells a story of three Palestinian-American women who are torn between their individual hopes and dreams and their strict Arrab culture defining who they should be.
Although I took my time reading this book (longer than two days), I'm glad I did because I did not want it to end. The author gave a voice to the silenced and agency to the oppressed. An encouraging, but emotional novel for any reader, "A Women Is No Man" is a must-read for all ages. I'm in awe that this is Etaf Rum's first novel, but so very thankful she told this story!
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