Etaf Rum

The New York Times bestseller and Read with Jenna TODAY SHOW Book Club pick telling the story of three generations of Palestinian-American women struggling to express their individual desires within the confines of their Arab culture in the wake of shocking intimate violence in their community. A GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS FINALIST FOR BEST FICTION AND BEST DEBUT • BOOKBROWE'S BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A MARIE CLAIRE BEST WOMEN'S FICTION OF THE YEAR • A REAL SIMPLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A POPSUGAR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR ALL WRITTEN BY FEMALES A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A Washington Post 10 Books to Read in March • A Newsweek Best Book of the Summer • A USA Today Best Book of the Week • A Washington Book Review Difficult-To-Put-Down Novel • A Refinery 29 Best Books of the Month • A Buzzfeed News 4 Books We Couldn't Put Down Last Month • A New Arab Best Books by Arab Authors • An Electric Lit 20 Best Debuts of the First Half of 2019 • A The Millions Most Anticipated Books of 2019 “Garnering justified comparisons to Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns... Etaf Rum’s debut novel is a must-read about women mustering up the bravery to follow their inner voice.” —Refinery 29 "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.

A Novel

A Woman Is No Man

Elad Schulman

blue

Words could do extraordinary things, but sometimes they were not enough.

Sophia 

Many days, Isra felt as though she had never had a life before marriage, before motherhood. What had her own childhood been like? She couldn’t remember being a child. 

Wow! The parallels here. This also ties to a passage I recently highlighted from Madame Bovary, which is such a surprising connection.

Bethany Jenkins

“I just assumed you’d be free.” He gave her a curious expression. “You know, because you’re a man.”

Adam said nothing, continuing to stare. Finally he said, “I am free,” and looked away. (22)

“I’m surprised your parents forced you to go to college. I’d assumed they’d let you make your own choices.”

“You know.” She met his eyes. “Because you’re a man.”

Nasser looked at her curiously. “Is that what you think? That I can do anything I want because I’m a man?”

“That’s the world we live in.” (32)

A Woman Is No Man quotes

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