Alexander Cooper 
Summary of A Woman Is No Man 
by Etaf Rum — A Comprehensive Summary

Summary of A Woman Is No Man - A Comprehensive Summary



The following version was used to make this summary: Rum, Etaf. A Woman is No Man. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2019. The novel is broken into three sections, however for the reasons for this summary will be broken into eight sections. The original starts without a chapter, heading, or defined character — only a female voice disclosing to the reader how, ‘I was born without a voice.’ The perspective ends as she explains that the story starts in Palestine.

The perspective changes to third person from Isra, in Birzeit, Palestine, in 1990. She is 17, and her folks have brought a suitor to wed her: a Palestinian man named Adam who lives in America. They go to Jerusalem to get her visa, and have a huge wedding ceremony. Her perspective closes as she hopes her life will be better in America.

Section 1 starts according to Deya’s perspective, in 2008 in Brooklyn, as she prepares mint chai for a suitor, Nasser. She is 18, in high school, and wants to go to college, but Fareeda wants her to get married first. She meets with Nasser in the kitchen while his folks converse with her grandparents. A while later, Fareeda tells her Nasser needs to see her again, and she hesitantly agrees to meet him once more. Sometime later she tells her three younger sisters Nora, Layla, and Amal about him, and they talk about their folks who died in an auto accident when Deya was seven. Deya thinks about her memories of her dad beating her mom.

Isra lands in New York and Adam takes her home to Brooklyn, where they will live in the cellar of the family home. That evening he forces her to engage in sexual relations and wipes her vaginal blood as evidence of her virginity. Isra falls into her new life with Adam however she soon doesn’t care for it. He works the entire day and sometimes later and scarcely focuses on her. All she does is chores with Fareeda, or gazes out the window. Deya meanwhile listens to her friends at school talk about their weddings and concludes she would not like to be married and wants instead to go to college. Fareeda shows her an unsent letter from Isra to her mom dated 1997 that shows how depressed Isra was. Deya asks Fareeda come clean with her about her folks’ deaths, however Fareeda advises her to move on.

One day, Deya receives a letter with a business card for Books and Beans. She calls the number and the lady will not tell Deya her name however advises her to skip school, and come to Manhattan to meet her. Isra meanwhile gets pregnant. She also gets closer with Sarah, Adam’s younger sister, and Sarah offers to bring her books but she declines. Part 1 finishes as Isra delivers her daughter Deya, to Fareeda’s chagrin.



To be continued..




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