A Woman Is No Man

I would give this 3.5 stars. It was entertaining enough (albeit in a very sad way — and potentially triggering for anyone who has encountered abuse) but the real interest was in learning about the cultural struggles of Palestinian women/women from ultra conservative Islamic cultures. I thought the dialog felt contrived and the plot was predicatable; but would still recommend for the human interest component.

The chapters were very repetitive. It didn't feel like the story actually started progressing until I passed the 70% mark. Also the writing felt a bit simplistic, it read more like a Y/A novel than adult fiction to me. 

It was infuriating to read all the shame and guilt women buried themselves with in this book simply for giving birth to a girl instead of a boy; especially the stupidity of their misogyny blaming women for birthing girls when it's THE MAN'S sperm that determines the gender!

It's a very bleak look into the patriarchal views of religion, and how religion oppress women still to this day. This past week four women have been killed by their current or ex partner and it's been pointed out that statistics show 60% of all partner violence is committed by men of non western backgrounds. To me there's no doubt there is violence - especially towards women and girls -in religion and in culture, and this book explored this topic only by scratching the surface. I wished it would've approached it a bit differently; it's like there was so much oppression, sadness and violence throughout the book that the ultimate climax of the plot didn't have the impact I'm sure the author was trying to convey. Also the simplistic writing didn't help, it was like it downplayed the entire story. It was giving “Disney princess but make it more depressing and tune up the oppression a bit” to me 😐