A WOMAN IS NO MAN.

'A Woman is No Man' by

Etaf Rum🍂

Your father doesn't have to detach himself from the family to earn money. A man doesn't have to earn every single penny by himself, you call him 'Strong' when he suppress his emotions, you call him 'Manly' when he controls the women in the home. Can you hear his screams inside?  Can you understand how he desperately needs economic support? You praise him for his manliness, for keeping your mother locked up in the kitchen, for working hard to earn money and support his family, what you can't understand is that, he is the first victim of patriarchy. 

The society has mistaken life skills for gender roles. Gender roles are obviously menacing for both men and women. When your mother tries to come out of the kitchen and support her husband economically, she gets tethered to the haunting gender role, when your father wants to stay at home and help his wife, he gets threatened by this disgusting gender role. 

'A Woman is No Man' by Etaf Rum is a haunting novel set in Palestine and Brooklyn. It talks about the journey of two women, Isra and Deya. Isra, believed in the love that exists in the marriage until she gets married off to Adam, she believed that America would be different, it won't suffocate her freedom like Palestine, but she failed to realize that a place can't cleanse people's parochial thoughts and regressive ideas. The mornings would be the same like how she spent in Palestine, inside the kitchen, the nights are even more horrible with the beatings of Adam. She wanted to change the life of her daughters, she wanted them to get out of the parochial sphere where she's living in, but before she could release them from the misogynist environment, she dies, like a rain drop gets immersed in the filthy puddle. 

Now, Fareeda, Isra's mother in law, holds her granddaughters' future. She imposes the same disgusting gender roles on Isra's oldest daughter Deya. The story moves with the heart aching chapters, when the readers desperately want Deya to fight for her rights, Etaf Rum, introduces a strong character to reveal Isra's life to Deya. The plot is astounding, this book is a compilation of unheard voices in our society.