Welcome friend! Ariel and I enjoyed two buddy reads in November this second book recommended by her, A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum, became one of our all time favorites. Take a look at the synopsis and then dive into our discussion.
Etaf Rum | Goodreads
This debut novel by a Palestinian-American voice takes us inside the lives of a conservative Arab family living in America. In Brooklyn, eighteen-year-old Deya is starting to meet with suitors. Though she doesn’t want to get married, her grandparents give her no choice. History is repeating itself: Deya’s mother, Isra, also had no choice when she left Palestine as a teenager to marry Adam. Though Deya was raised to believe her parents died in a car accident, a secret note from a mysterious, yet familiar-looking woman makes Deya question everything she was told about her past. As the narrative alternates between the lives of Deya and Isra, she begins to understand the dark, complex secrets behind her community.
A Woman Is No Man – Discussion
Kriti: It is such a great feeling when a book we read together becomes an all-time favorite. Since finishing this, I have raved about this one to a few people and want more to read it. What better way to highlight this book than on the blog?
Ariel: We tend to have a theme of finding historical fictions that follow multiple generations throughout different points of history that often make us grapple with difficult subjects that reflect real life. This was an excellent book for discussion and a very immersive story that made it a quick read and very difficult to put down.
The Characters
Isra’s narrative is from when she was a young girl in Palestine in the 90s and her marriage was arranged. She has always loved books and is fluent in English. She arrives in America with the hope that it would be different from her culture, that she would be able to experience freedom but she soon realizes how stuck she is in the little Brooklyn house that her in-laws call home.
In the 2000s, Deya is Isra’s oldest daughter, experiencing the parade of suitors that her grandmother has lined up for her. She doesn’t want to get married. She would rather go to college but that is not an option. Her mother and father passed away when she was eight years old and she doesn’t have happy memories of them. She feels the pressure of being the oldest child on whom the future of her three youngest siblings depends because in many cultures including the Arab, the eldest has to be married first. When an oddly-familiar woman reaches out to her, saying she will help her with her situation, Deya finds courage to venture out of Brookly and, in getting to Manhattan to meet this lady, she also finds answers about her past.
A third perspective in the story is from Fareeda, Deya’s grandmother and Isra’s mother-in-law. She fills in the gaps of what was happening after Deya was born. Adam, Isra’s husband, was her oldest son. She had 2 other sons and a daughter and everyone lived together in the same Brooklyn house. As the oldest generation in the story, she saw the harshest realities of the Palestine-Israel war. She cannot go back to her home country to live there again but she has adapted in America to continue her culture and beliefs the best way she can. This means finding brides for her sons who meet her standards as well as following long established customs of marrying her girls early.
Each of the characters grapple with societal pressures and traumatic experiences, and each of them in their context responds differently. Isra feels trapped and she finds a love of reading that allows her to experience broader horizons. Deya fights against constraints that have been in place for generations and learns how to find agency for herself. Fareeda experiences the horrors of a refugee camp, the death of her children, and the trauma of being forcibly displaced by Israeli forces and has to navigate all of that while being the head of a household and raising children in a foreign country.
The Setting and Situations
A Woman Is No Man is a thoughtful meditation on the lives of the members of one conservative Arab family, the differences between men and women, the choices that lead to regret over time and how we can change. As a story that spans decades, I loved seeing where Fareeda came from, how what happened with Isra challenged her and how she was ultimately convinced to do something different by Deya. Fareeda is the matriarch of the family who runs it with a strong hand and in hindsight, does see the mistakes she made with her sons and daughter. She is superstitious. She is critical and judgemental of others in her community. She is strong and not afraid to stand up to her husband. In some ways, she is the man of the house. I liked reading about her relationship with her husband and how that fit in with her children. Ariel, what did you think of Fareeda’s perspective? Is there a scene that sticks out with her for you?
Fareeda is a powerful character that ties Deya’s and Isra’s narrative together into a cohesive whole. I think my favorite scene with Fareeda is when she and Isra go out to socialize with the other Palestinian women and Fareeda has to reckon with the fact that many of her peers have adjusted to life in the US at a faster pace than she has and have adapted progressive ways of thinking that allows for the following generations many more freedoms than what she was offering her family. That causes her to double down in her own trauma and hold even tighter to the things she can’t control.
Isra is married to the oldest son in the family and as his wife, she is supposed to give him his heir. A Woman Is No Man addresses the preference of having sons instead of daughters; and the pressure to continue having children until a son is born. Though neither Isra nor Adam have a say in the sex of their child, Isra feels continuous pressure from Fareeda to deliver a son. Adam too feels this pressure but he is crumbling under other demands from his family – running his father’s and his own business, helping his brother in his business, paying for his second brother’s education… There are a lot of responsibilities on his shoulders. He finds solace in drinking. When his brother has a son, Adam mentally breaks and starts beating Isra. She becomes depressed, loses faith in her religion, but her sister-in-law, Sarah, offers her a way back to her beloved books and Isra starts to feel alive again. As she births more daughters and sees them headed towards the same fate as her – brought up conservative, likely to be married off at a young age – she tries to speak to Adam and make a change. Isra’s perspective is probably the most heartbreaking in this story. Ariel, what did you think of Isra and her story arch?
Isra’s narrative was the most difficult to read of the three for me. The main points of domestic violence can transcend any culture and any religion or lack thereof, and abuse of any kind is not easy to read. Isra’s love of reading and her love for her daughters even through the haze of postpartum depression shone strong even when the circumstances around her were too much. Many people in the US are afraid to go to the police for help in these situations, and even though Sarah told her at one point that she could call the police, the book accurately portrayed why this is often not thought of as an option due to the cycle of violence and alienation that occurs in abusive situations.
Sarah is another important character in this book. She ran away when Fareeda was trying to marry her off and her parents have erased her from their lives. She feels the loneliness of losing her family and does not want Deya to make the same mistakes she did. But this involves unburying things that Fareeda has been hiding from Deya and her sisters. For Fareeda, she will have to confront the shame in not helping Isra and turning a blind eye to the beating. What did you think of Sarah and her approach to support Deya?
Sarah was still a teen when she left her household with Isra and Fareeda, and she was just trying to find herself and figure out how she could live her life outside of that family. After a generation, Sarah gets a chance to be a support for Deya that she was not capable of being for Isra when she was younger. Through Sarah’s support Deya is able to confront her grandmother and take steps toward reconciliation and healing of the long-hidden wounds.
The audiobook of A Woman Is No Man does a phenomenal job of expressing tensions, fear, arguments, worry, every emotion that the characters experience.
Overall, this was one of our top buddy reads of the year, and a phenomenal way to close out our 2024 buddy reading discussions! 🙂
Thanks for reading our discussion! Let us know what you think of this book and add it to your Goodreads if you would like to read it.
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