She longs for literature and an education and sinks in to a deep depression as she struggles to hold on to the hope that her mother-in-law will soften in how she sees her, that her husband will grow to love her and that her family will accept her daughters and love them instead of seeing them as burdens.įareeda is the grandmother of the family and though she has lived in America for decades, she is determined to carry on her culture’s views and beliefs at great cost to her daughter, daughters-in-law and granddaughters. She quickly learns that even though her location has changed, how she is viewed has not and she is forced to stay within the confines of the family’s small home, cooking and cleaning and making every effort to produce more sons for the family. She arrives in America filled with hopes and dreams that her marriage will be one of love and her new life full of opportunity. Isra is whisked away from Palestine when she is chosen to marry Fareeda’s son and live with him and his extended family in New York City.

Rum lays bare on the page this harsh reality through the eyes of three Palestinian-American women and the result is one of the most gripping, heart-rending stories that I have ever read. According to the UN Women for Arab States website, 700 million women alive today were married before they turned 18 and 1 in 3 women worldwide have been physically abused by intimate partners. Etaf Rum has bravely lifted the veil on a culture that is not readily accessible to many of us and provided a glimpse of what life is like for millions of women around the world as well as right here in America. It leaves me reeling, it haunts me, it compels me to dig deeper, to stop everyone I know and tell them “if you only read one book this month, THIS IS THE BOOK YOU NEED TO READ.” A Woman Is No Man is such a book. If a woman called the cops every time her husband beat her, all our men would be in jail.”Įvery now and then a book comes along that impacts me so much it changes who I am as a reader and as a person. “Husbands beat their wives all the time back home. It’s one thing for our parents to hit us, but after marriage, as a grown woman?” “A bad day? Are you kidding me? You know domestic abuse is illegal here, right? If a man ever put his hands on me, I’d call the cops right away.

A woman is no man author