A Woman Is No Man

By: Etaf Rum

Narrated by: Ariana Delawari, Dahlia Salem, Susan Nesmai

Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

A New York Times best seller.

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.

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.

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.

©2019 Etaf Rum (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"A celebration of 'the strength and power of our women'." (Booklist)

"Sometimes heroism is loud and dramatic. Other times, it is daring to listen to that quiet voice within and having the courage to follow it... Etaf Rum has done a great service by sharing these voices with us." (Shilpi Somaya Gowda, New York Times  best-selling author)

"A work of literary bravery." (Nadia Hashimi)

Deeply angered and hopeful at the same time

Reading this book gets you through a big range of emotions, from being angry to feeling hopeful.

It felt like a window through which I peeked at a different culture, family issues, trauma and interactions.

I deeply loved and appreciated this book as a whole, I empathized with the 3 generations of women and felt their sorrows and the generational trauma.

“It took more than one woman to do things differently. It took a world of them.”

But it always can start with the courage of one.

The easiest and hardest of reads... well worth it

This is no literary masterpiece in terms of poetic prose... but it is an excellent story which reverberates long after you have finished. It is a palestinian story, it is a muslim story but there are elements that every religion and every woman will recognise. Critics have slammed the endless questioning narrative, but it is the key element of the whole story... the endless dilemma of someone who feels powerless yet determined to make changes... in real life, finding strength is a slow process, with a lot of repeated history and this book tells it well.
The story itself unfolds neatly, with no detail out of place. The performances on the audible version are excellent - I looked forward to journeys in my car so I could hear more... and I look forward to more books from Etaf.

A spectacular book indeed.

I was deeply drawn to every character.
i thoroughly enjoyed this book and i highly recommend it.
You can tell that books saved this author, books helped her become and writing this must have saved her too.
It's not autobiographical but it might as well have been.
thinking of getting it? a big YES.

Heartbreaking portrayal of many women’s lives.

The story and characters are true of many women whether Muslim or not and the domestic violence that is acceptable in many societies and even by women themselves. It gave me a whole different perspective on what it must be like for many women who live with limited freedom and little opportunity to integrate into new countries they are living in. The story gave hope of girls being able to stand up for themselves and gain an education while still retaining close ties with family and hopefully change the perception of themselves and value of women in society. It wasn’t an easy book to listen to but one I would definitely recommend as insightful. All were victims in own ways and nothing is totally black and white.

Powerful

Oh my goodness, such a powerful story.
what life is like for women who have no freedom or choice. Raised in a deeply entrenched male dominant culture.

I loved this book.

I could not put this book down which for me who does not read a huge amount is unheard of. I felt totally involved in this book and it opened my eyes to another world. I would definitely recommend A Woman is no Man.

Interesting story, awkward style

I found this book very engaging narratively, but I struggled with the repetitive writing and awkward dialogue. I look forward to watching this author develop her style.

I need to know more

A beautiful book and a sad but inspiring story. I hope there will be more to come

Important but problematic

From reading interviews with the author, it seems this book reflects a personal story of surviving abuse and therefore its an important one. I want to be sensitive to that, because it was quite beautifully constructed and it is a book bourne of suffering. However from reading reviews, it appears that it has left some readers (most likely those who don't know any Palestinians) with the impression that it reflects the 'typical' Arab or Palestinian woman's experience. This is frankly, deeply offensive. It is interesting that this story gets championed above books by other Arab women writers, which reflect a more nuanced portrayal of Arab culture and have female leads who are anything but submissive, alongside kind and loving men in the supporting cast. To a different audience this book may serve a purpose of sensitising them to violence against women, but to a mainly American and European one, I am concerned that it simply feeds racist stereotypes that don't really help anyone. It also brushes over the violence of the Nakba and military occupation. The narration was very problematic - the pronunciation of Arabic words was almost consistently completely wrong - even the main characters' names. I found that hard to listen to.

View into Another Reality

This was a really interesting and emotive novel, providing insight into the lives of women who live among us in the west but whose reality couldn't be more different. What let the book down was the awkward flow and the way it ended, but still overall worth listening too.

Brilliant

A brilliant novel, which gives a great insight into the Palestinian culture. Well written & narrated