“I was born without a voice, one cold overcast day in Brooklyn, New York. No one ever spoke of my condition. I did not know I was mute until years later, when I opened my mouth to ask for what I wanted and realized no one could her me. Where I come from, voicelessness is the condition of my gender…”

So begins Etaf Rum’s remarkable first novel, A Woman is No Man. The book is the story of the lives of three generations of Palestinian-American women, Fareeda, Isra and Devya.

Fareeda, born in Palestine, is fourteen when she marries her husband in the al-Am’ari refugee camp. The couple arrives in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn with few belongings but a strong commitment to maintain their Arabic culture and values. In the spring of 1990, Fareeda returns to Palestine with her son Adam, in order to arrange a marriage between him and Isra, a seventeen-year old.

Isra comes to America hoping to experience more freedom in her life. She gives birth to four daughters in a row, the eldest of whom is Devya. Over the years, Adam’s interactions with Isra become increasingly violent. When she is seven, Fareeda tells Devya that her parents have died in a car crash.

Devya’s story opens in 2008, when she is in her late teens. She and her three sisters live with Fareeda, who is trying to make certain that the girls adhere to Arabic cultural practices. Devya begs to be allowed to go to college and resists being railroaded into an arranged marriage. Devya discovers that her family has lied to her about the circumstances of how her parents died.

The novel starts in 1990 and ends in 2008, which coincides with Etaf Rum’s childhood years.  Her life mirrors Devya’s. Her family forbade her to attend public school, worrying that associating with Americans might corrupt her Arabic values. She married at nineteen and then quickly had two children. At some point, she went to college earning both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She is divorced now and lives in North Carolina with her two children. Rum’s sisters are happy she wrote the book, her parents not so much.

This novel is thoroughly engaging. Once I started reading, I took every opportunity to get back to the story. Rum is skilled at writing a distinct point of view for each of her characters. She evokes empathy for her main characters by making sure they are multidimensional. For example, Isra’s husband, Adam, is cruel and violent. Rum never justifies or condones his behavior, however she reveals aspects of his life that cast him in a slightly more sympathetic light.

Rum’s novel describes a shift in Arab-American society over these recent years. Now more young women resist arranged marriages and reject the idea of marrying young. Some who do marry young wind up going to college.  Divorce is becoming more common among Arab-American women.

Writing about the topic presented challenges for Rum. She did not want to re-enforce anti-Arabic sentiments. She also feared the reaction from the Arab-American community. However, she felt compelled to speak out, to give a voice to the voiceless. In the introduction of her book, she says, “You’ve never heard this story before. No matter how many books you’ve read, haw many tales you know, believe me: no one has ever told you a story like this one. Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of, dangerous, the ultimate shame.”

I’m glad I read A Woman is No Man. I applaud her courage in telling her story.

NOTE: Some of the biographical information about Etaf Rum came from this LA Review of Books interview.