A Woman Is No Man

Etaf Rum weaves a powerful, multigenerational story of Palestinian-American women navigating the weight of tradition, silence, and shame.

 Seventeen-year-old Isra is forced into marriage and brought from Palestine to Brooklyn in 1990, where she faces a life of confinement under her domineering mother-in-law Fareeda and an emotionally distant husband. With each daughter she bears, Isra’s isolation deepens, as she fails to meet the family’s desperate hope for a son.

Years later, in 2008, Isra’s eldest daughter Deya is eighteen and facing the same fate of arranged marriage at the hands of her strict grandmother, who took on raising her after her parents died. however, Deya wants more—college, independence, a future of her own choosing. But when a series of revelations about her family's past surfaces, she begins to unravel the lies she's been told, and the violent legacy of silence that shaped the women before her.

Set between two generations and two countries, A Woman Is No Man is both a haunting portrait of a closed cultural world and a universal tale about the courage it takes to break cycles of oppression. It’s a story of love and betrayal, tradition and rebellion, and the quiet strength of women finding their voices despite the cost.