“voicelessness is the condition of my gender”? Will the reader be Isra endures over the years,īut the cost is a shell of a human being, “an empty heart.”Īn act of betrayal? Or, a contemporary woman’s activism to be the voice for the “paralyzing shame” she becomes ashamed of even existing. May feel overwhelmed by the weakest one, Isra, so battered by loneliness,ĭespair, identity loss, and relentless physical assault she descends into such This in one or more of her four main female characters. Says, is to highlight the “strength and resiliency” of Arab women. Why raise the stakes of dishonoring her culture, in which honor and “reputation is everything”? There were no secrets between them.” So why reveal secrets, whether there’s any truth to them or well-fictionalized we perceive these truths to be real? Rum’s confidences about her fears lead us to believe she is exposing truths meant to stay behind closed doors. “It was as if all the Arabs in Brooklyn stood hand in hand, from Bay Ridge all the way up to Atlantic Avenue, and shared everything, from one ear to the next. Her compelling novel is set in Brooklyn, where Rum was born and lives, perhaps in the same Bay Ridge multicultural community her characters dwell. No matter how many books you’ve read, how many tales you know, believe me: no one has ever told you a story like this one.” Presumably something the author felt morally compelled to write, saying: Yet she dares doing so anyway.Ĭlearly, something else is afoot. “ Surely I’ll only upset people and fuel furtherĭiscrimination already stereotyped by a single story. Risking perpetuating negative stereotypes about Rum’s own immigrant communityĪt a time when hate crimes and anti-immigrant sentiments are sharply on the She was “constantly swallowed by fear” writing it, yet she broke a “culture ofĬreate a dark plot about arranged marriages in strict, conservative Arabįamilies that isolates Palestinian women with emotional and physical abuse, Reader copy and the preface to her debut novel, A Woman is No Man, confiding She says as much in a Dear Reader note in an advanced

(Brooklyn 2008 Palestine to Brooklyn 1990s backstories): Etaf

A woman is no man by etaf rum