A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum

 

Three generations of Palestinian women's experiences within their families make up this novel.  Isra was living her life in Palestine when she was betrothed by her family to Adam and within weeks, sent to the United States to make her life with him and his family.  Adam is the oldest son and works all day in the stores the family owns.  Isra is left to work in the house; making the basement apartment they have in his parent's house clean and inviting, cooking, cleaning and doing whatever her mother-in-law, Fareeda, asks and as the children come, being a mother.  Isra has four children, all girls.  The culture is to blame the woman for the sex of the child with no weight being given to the scientific knowledge that the father determines a child's gender.

Fareeda is never content.  She immigrated to the United States with her husband, fleeing the Palestinian refugee camp they were forced into when their family lost their home and fortune during one of the wars with Israel.  She has given her husband three sons, all who live with them with their wives and children and one daughter, Sarah.  Fareeda is determined that since her life was hard, she will pass that down to her daughter and daughters-in-law.  Her sharp tongue and constant recital of how each woman has disappointed them all fills their days and quashes their dreams.

Deya is about to graduate high school.  She is Isra and Adam's oldest daughter although she barely remembers them.  All she knows is that they both died when she was little, leaving her and her three sisters to be raised by Fareeda.  Fareeda is determined to force Deya into an early marriage as all the other women have done but Deya is determined to go to college.  She does not want the life of her mother and grandmother, aunts and cousins whose lives consist of cooking, cleaning, raising children and being beaten by their husbands as their outlet for disappointments.

This book received a lot of awards.  It was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice book as well as a USA Today Best Book Of The Week.  It was named a finalist by the Goodreads Choice Awards both as Best Fiction and Best Debut.  It is a difficult book to read, the claustrophobic lives of the women hard for most women to imagine.  The presentation of domestic abuse in many Muslim households has been fraught with controversy.  But this is an important book to read for those interested in diversity, for learning about lives that are normal in other cultures yet so far from the reader's everyday experience.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.