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Loc'd & Lit

Aight, so boom! What happens when you bring together two millennial women with locs who also share a love of books, cocktails, and great conversation? You get the Loc’d & Lit book club!

This club was created by two life-long friends, Alanna and Trish, who are in the beginning stages of their loc journey and who also share a mutual love of all things books! We hope to build a community of fellow readers where we can share our voices and opinions as they are not always heard or highlighted in the current mainstream book-sphere. So join us monthly as we discuss our latest read and touch upon all themes relevant to women today, whether it be: relationships, parenting, career, race, or life’s constant twists and turns. We hope to explore it all as we talk about the ways that we are inspired and grow though our favorite books.

So may our locs thrive, our cocktails quench, and our pages turn - Its Loc’d & Lit!! (bookclub).

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A Woman Is No Man: A Novel

By Etaf Rum

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A Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist for Best Fiction and Best Debut - BookBrowse's Best Book of the Year - A Marie Claire Best Women's Fiction of the Year - A Real Simple Best Book of the Year - A PopSugar Best Book of the Year - A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice - A Washington Post 10 Books to Read in March - A Newsweek Best Book of the Summer - A USA Today Best Book of the Week - A Washington Book Review Difficult-To-Put-Down Novel - A Refinery 29 Best Books of the Month - A Buzzfeed News 4 Books We Couldn't Put Down Last Month - A New Arab Best Books by Arab Authors - An Electric Lit 20 Best Debuts of the First Half of 2019 - A The Millions Most Anticipated Books of the Year

"Garnering justified comparisons to Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns... Etaf Rum's debut novel is a must-read about women mustering up the bravery to follow their inner voice." --Refinery 29

The New York Times bestseller and Read with Jenna TODAY SHOW Book Club pick telling the story of three generations of Palestinian-American women struggling to express their individual desires within the confines of their Arab culture in the wake of shocking intimate violence in their community.

"Where I come from, we've learned to silence ourselves. We've been taught that silence will save us. Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of--dangerous, the ultimate shame."

Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband Adam, a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children--four daughters instead of the sons Fareeda tells Isra she must bear.

Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra's oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda's insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. Deya can't help but wonder if her options would have been different had her parents survived the car crash that killed them when Deya was only eight. But her grandmother is firm on the matter: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man.

But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths about her family--knowledge that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, the past, and her own future.

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363 pages

Average rating: 7.96

574 RATINGS

22 REVIEWS

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Carla_is_Reading

Oct 24, 2024

10/10 stars

Powerful Multi-generational story of Palestinian women.
Mothers, daughters, and what they carry over to their new generation.
I felt the importance of preserving customs and culture but just as equally important is outgrowing old ways.
A special magical lesson for me:
A true citizen of where you're from is honoring both things equally (the past and the future) and evolving into the best version that maybe your grandmother dreamt about or wouldn't even dare to let herself dream about.
There is sorrow and pain, but also hope. I see a lot of generational curse breakers in here both vividly and in between the lines.
A deeply impactful book.

Ms_Tammy_lovestoread

Jun 13, 2024

7/10 stars

Whew!! I wasn't sure if I could make it through this book. It was so demoralizing, and the story wasn't even about me! I even wondered if the author was somehow exaggerating, but then I thought it was probably worse than what she wrote. I know women who live like this, but I do not know to what extent. There was a news story some time ago about an Indian nurse whose husband followed her to work and killed her because she was trying to leave him. The book was well-written but a little long. I was dismayed when it was finally revealed what happened to Deja's parents. It was wild that the grandmother was still trying to uphold this ridiculous culture, knowing what it does to women and especially knowing what happened to her family.

Anonymous

May 25, 2024

8/10 stars

This book really opens your eyes to certain cultural differences, but it also has a relatable feel for those whose families are a little more tight knit and strict. It was a very interesting read.

Anonymous

Jan 27, 2024

10/10 stars

What an incredible book to finish off the year! This was truly so powerfully written and painful to read, especially as someone who relates to some of the central struggles in the novel (feeling pressure from family and culture to get married young), and my heart broke for Isra and healed partway with Deya's resolution breaking the cycle of her foremothers. While it's not necessarily about the occupation and genocide in Palestine, those events do play a role in the story as well and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for literature from Palestinian authors like I am because it tells a really necessary story on behalf of those without voices in Palestinian culture.

IronQueen

Jan 19, 2024

10/10 stars

This hit way too close to home. Ezra is close to my age and her major life events happened around my own. There is freedom in breaking the cycle and it takes women to do it. Once I sat on the “male” side of church in an Orthodox country with my husband, whom I later risked my life and my son’s to escape. Did the men say a word? No. It was the women who interrupted the service to physically and painfully drag me to the women’s side. I learned that day that when a people group is sufficiently oppressed, the more powerful people group don’t need to enforce- it is enforced by the “culture” of the oppressed. This book made me cry for my dear and darling MIL. The brave, wonderful lady who dared to break the cycle of abuse by bringing me kindness and protection within the community. RIP momma Ps - the woman who escaped after my successful escape was murdered by her husband. Be kind to cultures unknown. There are battles faced beyond understanding ❤️