American · b. 1989
Etaf Rum is a Palestinian-American author and the daughter of Palestinian immigrants. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in a conservative community where she was married young. She later earned a master's degree in English literature and taught writing at the college level. Her debut novel, A Woman Is No Man, appeared in 2019 and became a New York Times bestseller. It follows three generations of Palestinian-American women in Brooklyn and deals with arranged marriage, domestic violence and the pressure to stay silent. The book was widely read by book clubs and was among the first novels by a Palestinian-American woman to reach a large mainstream audience. Her second novel, Evil Eye, came out in 2023. Rum writes about women who push against the limits set by family and community, and her work has opened wider conversation about abuse in immigrant households.