Another Mother is not only a memoir about the author’s life, but also includes a condensed biography of Dezna Sanderson, the woman hired by his parents to care for him and his sister when they were children.  Why would a Jewish American man growing up in Princeton, New Jersey, be so invested in discovering his Jamaican nanny’s past?

Before I started reading this book, I actually assumed one of Ross Urken’s parents, or at least one of his grandparents, must be from Jamaica.  He had recently hosted a book launch in Kingston, to which my own mother had been and purchased my copy, so it was a logical explanation for his deep connection to our country.

Once I had read a couple chapters, which (by the way) are named after some of Bob Marley’s lyrics, I realized that I had jumped to conclusions way too quickly – Urken is not part-Jamaican.  However, his keen interest in our island is clear as the Jamaican manners, patois and cuisine, which Dezna instilled on her young charge, are lovingly demonstrated in his prose.  In fact, what this author learned from her as a child, he carried straight into adulthood and proudly flits between the two throughout the book.

Amidst his literary prowess, it becomes apparent that once Dezna passed away, the adult Ross begins to pursue his quest to unravel the truth about Dezna’s past.  Through happenstance, Ross meets some Jamaican Jews in New York and uses this as an excuse to go to Jamaica on an exploration to find old Jewish graves across the land of wood and water.  When they hit Black River in St. Elizabeth, he sneaks off to meet some of Dezna’s children and so begins the journey to acquiring an entire new family he now calls his own.

Near the end of this story, but undoubtedly not the end of his life’s story, Ross makes reference to the book Are You My Mother?  Indeed, Dezna was his second mother, so I suppose Ross Kenneth Urken is part-Jamaican.

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Firstly, I want to acknowledge and apologize for this tardy post.  It was my children’s mid-term break, then I had a week of my own intense work, and lastly we had our first case of COVID-19 in Jamaica, so our PM decided to close all schools (for which I completely grateful).  I have also been instructed to self-quarantine at home for at least 14 days due to my pre-existing autoimmune illness and the fact that I am on immunosuppressants.  So, now I am at home with two boys, 24 hours each day, homeschooling and trying to write!

Personally, I found this novel rather confusing and, as a result, it was difficult for me to fully engage in the wellbeing of the protagonist, Marie, who leads quite an ordinary life in Brooklyn, New York.   Alice McDermott, who is a critically acclaimed author, haphazardly jumps between Marie’s childhood, marriage, teenage years, motherhood and old age, taking most of the other characters with her as she does so, but nothing truly exciting happens.  I suppose that’s the point of the ordinary life led by Marie.

There is much merit in McDermott’s writing, however, as her descriptions of the people and surroundings in this novel are thorough and vivid.  Indeed, these were exactly what prevented me from giving it all up for another book.  I would recommend Someone to anyone who appreciates literary prose, but if you’re looking for something exciting to happen, this is not the novel for you.

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Imagine being born in the land of the free, the United States of America, Brooklyn no less, but your grandparents still expect you to live by their Arab culture in which they grew up.  You are a teenage girl in high school, by the way, and college is not even an option because you must be married and sent off to live with your spouse’s family before it’s considered too late.  You’re lucky if you get to choose between several suitors, picked out by your family of course, because many girls are not graced with that privilege.  Moreover, it’s a privilege to be picked by a man’s family, especially if your family is poor, so it helps if you are attractive.

This is the life of 18 year old Deya, the eldest of four girls, and the year is 2008.  She desperately wants to go to college but her grandmother, Fareeda, refuses to entertain the idea because one must simply accept that a woman is no man.  After all, Fareeda herself has had to accept the plight of being someone’s wife, enduring domestic violence at a level incomprehensible to the rest of us.  Deya also desperately wishes she knew more about her mother, Isra, who supposedly died in a car accident with her father, Adam, and when she gets the opportunity, she chases after the truth at great risk.

Meanwhile, the author Etaf Rum takes the reader back to 1990 when 17 year old Palestinian, Isra, arrives in New York the day after her wedding to Adam, Fareeda’s son.  Their family fled poverty in Palestine some 15 years previously, and work tirelessly running a shop in Brooklyn.  Adam is the eldest of four children.  The youngest of Fareeda and Khaled’s kids is their only daughter, Sarah, who is expected to eventually suffer the same fate as every other female within their culture.  She and Isra become fast friends, bonding over forbidden books, which Isra hides in secret places of the dark basement bedroom that she and Adam share.

Isra comes to realise that the life of an Arab woman is no different in the United States.  She must still scrub the house clean, spend hours cooking for the men in the house and serve them when they return from work.  She does not have the freedom to even go shopping for food without her husband or father-in-law present.  Despite living to serve the men and be at their beck and call, baring a girl is dreaded amongst them all, so the resentment Fareeda feels towards Isra, when she keeps giving birth to girls, is insurmountable.  By the way, Isra is 22 years old when she is pregnant with her fourth girl, and is so emotionally and physically broken by Adam that she no longer has joy for her babies nor her books.

Despite the detailed descriptions of the oppressive lives of these women, you won’t want to put this novel down until you’ve reached the final word, when you’ll come to see that, indeed, a woman is no man.

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