A Woman Is No Man

Eighteen-year-old Deya enters the story at roughly the same age as her mother, and the cultural juxtaposition becomes obvious right away. While both women must bend to Fareeda’s will, Isra cannot find the courage to resist (until the end, and even then, her resistance happens covertly, without face-to-face confrontation). Deya, on the other hand, ultimately finds the strength to confront Fareeda and everything she represents: oppression, tradition, and silence. As Sarah helps her learn the truth of her parents’ deaths, Deya makes the choice that Isra cannot: a choice to value her own self-worth and to put herself above a culture that devalues her and forces her to view her own needs as secondary to the men around her. Rum seems ambivalent about the benefits of assimilation, but one thing is clear: The traditions that grip Isra like a vice and render her voiceless have less of a hold on Sarah and, ultimately, Deya. While Fareeda may bemoan the loss of culture and heritage, Deya would celebrate her new-found freedom as an independent American woman.

Raised in a refugee camp and subject to a horrific past, Fareeda is the embodiment of Arabic cultural traditions. Married to an abusive alcoholic and forced to live in squalid conditions, Fareeda learns the power of endurance, a quality she strives to pass on to the next generation. While that endurance is her primary coping mechanism, it also means tolerating abuse that should never be tolerated. She is resigned to the abuse, seeing it as a necessary aspect of preserving a culture she views as threatened by a morally bankrupt America.

While Isra and Deya serve as thematic bookends, Fareeda is more complex. She embodies the contradictions of any human being forced to undergo such traumatic experiences. She defends female subjugation and abhors it at the same time; she lectures Isra about deference to Adam, yet she openly defies her husband; she labors mightily to keep her own secrets under wraps even as those secrets are slowly destroying her. Ironically, she exhibits that defiance most overtly when defending Isra against her own son’s physical abuse. Seeing Isra’s blood, watching her cower like a cornered animal, and hearing Khaled’s unfounded accusations bring out Fareeda’s long-suppressed rage at Khaled (and at all men) and at the system of oppression that she has helped perpetuate. Like so many of the characters in A Woman Is No Man, Fareeda’s behavior is often dictated by the shame and self-loathing that such a hierarchal system imposes on its victims.

Sarah acts as both character and catalyst. As Fareeda’s and Khaled’s only (surviving) daughter, she is the epitome of the rebellious teenager. When viewed from an American perspective, this archetype elicits little more than aggrieved sighs, representing a difficult but necessary phase of life. From Fareeda’s perspective, however, a rebellious daughter means family shame; it means risking the label sharmouta, a mark of dishonor that could jeopardize her entire future; it means embarking on a slippery slope of cultural abdication when culture is often the only thing holding besieged communities together; and, finally, if left unchecked, it requires physical punishment as a consequence.

Sarah represents both the encroachment of a foreign culture and the potential liberation from a native one. She can see the world around her; she can see that, in America, girls are not required to live by the standards of their mothers and are not bound by traditions that suppress their professional and sexual selves. Sarah’s sexual activity represents the ultimate liberation and the worst sin. Once liberated, Sarah tries to liberate Deya as well. Although Sarah’s entreaties offer few specifics to a confused Deya, those entreaties make sense once she is ready to understand them. Sarah is adamant that she cannot make Deya’s choices for her and that, despite her fears, she must choose her own path. For Deya, that path means college, and when she is ready to confront both Fareeda’s lies and her own fears, that dream becomes reality.

The importance of mentors to individual success is no secret. Mentors model for their protégés what is possible, and even if Sarah had not shown Deya the article about her parents’ deaths, her mere presence as a college-educated career woman shows Deya that she has options beyond the path Fareeda has laid before her.