Title: A Woman is No Man*
Author: Etaf Rum
Rating: 5 stars / 5 stars
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Favorite Quote: “Telling a story wasn’t as simple as recalling memories. It was building on them and deciding which parts were best left unsaid” Rum, Etaf. A Woman is No Man. Harper, 2021, pg. 44.
Review: Well - this is one of three 5 star books I’ve read so far this year, so buckle up. If you’re looking for an unbiased review, you won’t find it here. This book made me an immediate Etaf Rum convert, and I will be reading every single thing she writes going forward. I. Am. Obsessed.
Let’s start with what it’s about -
A Woman is No Man ultimately explores the lives of three Palestinian-American women, who are all connected to one another in family and in adversity. It details the intricacies of female suffering in both a historical Palestine and a modern New York. It is a story of violence, of love and of hate, and a current runs through it of how literature inspires, protects, and shelters the lost and the desperate.
Each woman centered in this novel has her own story - though the overlap between them is as shocking as it is, at times, hidden. Fareeda, Isra, and Deya. The matriarch, the [SPOILER ALERT] dead mother, and the daughter trying to put the pieces together of her past as she is striving to figure out a future for herself that won’t confine itself to Fareeda’s expectations.
Structurally, this novel expertly demonstrates how a split timeline can paint a fuller picture of the characters and their lives than a linear timeline will (when, of course, the split timeline is done right). Amongst its parts, readers learn of Fareeda’s pre-America life, living in a refugee camp with an alcoholic husband, too young children, and a secret that only becomes clear deep into the novel’s lore. So too do readers watch the arc of Isra’s adult life - her wedding, her move to America, her deteriorating marriage categorized by violence and a brood of children who were never enough for the family she lived with because none of them were boys. And finally there’s Deya - Isra’s oldest daughter, the one who thinks she remembers her parents, but her memory is flawed, as she nears adulthood and the pressure to marry when what she wants is an education free of the shackles of a husband and children.
Ultimately each story resolves - Fareeda softening as she is forced to reflect on how her beliefs have divided her family, Isra dying, murdered, trying desperately to insure a better life for her children, and Deya achieving her goal - college before marriage, having also begun the process of creating a relationship with her family that is more sustainable than the one that existed throughout her childhood.
Rum’s structure, her characters, and the many story arcs that both intersect and blossom on their own, are a masterclass in a novel meant to take readers outside their comfort zones and meant to force thought and the confrontation of memory, of belief, and of family. Read. This. Book. Now.
About that Quote: At its core, this is a novel of womanhood, oppression, family, and the intersections of all three. But underneath those sweeping themes, there is an appreciation, one that is at times rabid in its intensity, for literature and the escape/promise of a future it provides. This quote hints at how this love of literature weaves itself into the greater themes of the novel - the characters both absorb stories but also tell them in equal measure - sometimes trying to provide comfort and other times to protect one another.
Incomplete of TWs for A Woman is No Man: SA, DV, murder, religious persecution
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