Colonialism and Cultural Patriarchy in Etaf Rum's A Woman Is No Man (2019)

Abstract

Abstract The colonial oppression and the traumas of the war partitioned the colonized people into two classifications: a class that, in view of Fanonian viewpoints, has faith in utilizing violence against the colonizer as a genuine right. The second class guides this fury to hurt people of their society and household instead of changing their lives and banishing the colonial from their lands. In her novel A Woman Is No Man (2019), Etaf Rum has presented the Palestinian Nakba and its effects on the psyche of Khaled, Yacob, Fareeda, and Mama, who were children when the first Zionist influx evacuated people out of their homes. She has additionally broken the code of silence to tackle domestic violence which is a delicate issue the Arab community is quiet about by shadowing these practices on Isra; her main female character. Rum has acquainted the readers to the daily life of Palestinian refugees after the Nakba and directed the attention towards the destitution and terrible living conditions Palestinians have been struggling with since 1948. By using theories of postcolonialism and patriarchy, the present paper introduces how colonialism and cultural patriarchy are related and how the colonized characters in the novel are so desperate to take their anger using violence in the wrong way.