Three generations of Palestinian-American women in contemporary Brooklyn are torn by individual desire, educational ambitions, a devastating tragedy, and the strict mores of traditional Arab culture.
[A] heartrending debut novel that will likely be a book club favorite ... In an open letter to readers, Rum has said that while writing this story, she fought her own apprehension about breaking the code of silence that surrounds the Palestinian immigrant community, as well as her fear of adding to stereotypes against it. Luckily for readers, she chose authenticity over caution. The result is a raw, sympathetic look into a world where parents order girls in their teens to marry against their will, a woman who helps her daughter-in-law with a newborn is considered too soft-hearted, and spousal rape and abuse are blamed on the victims who are shamed into silence ... However, the picture is not without hope or light ... Crafted with thoughtfulness and empathy, A Woman Is No Man celebrates resilience and the courage required to speak out against an unjust way of life.
... a dauntless exploration of the pathology of silence, an attempt to unsnarl the dark knot of history, culture, fear and trauma that can render conservative Arab-American women so visibly invisible ... Of Rum’s three women, it is implacable Fareeda — enforcer of norms, keeper of secrets — whose voice proves the most revelatory ... The triumph of Rum’s novel is that she refuses to measure her women against anything but their own hearts and histories ... Distinctly, defiantly and earnestly, A Woman Is No Man belongs to itself.
One of the challenges that Rum tackles is speaking openly about the brutal treatment of these women ... Rum was herself in an arranged marriage, and this personal experience imbues her narrative voice with authority and authenticity. Still, a potential concern for Arab authors writing for an American audience is how to portray Arab patriarchy within a Western milieu of Islamophobic and anti-Arab stereotypes. The book tells us that these men are broken — by the occupation, by hardship, by bigotry — but what readers see, for the most part, is their assault on women ... while Rum’s female characters have complexity and dimension, her male characters tend to lead their lives offstage, buried in work, and their humanity feels more elusive ... A Woman Is No Man complicates and deepens the Arab American story — a tale as rich and varied as America itself.
