The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Amina al-Sirafi, #1)

by Shannon Chakraborty

these things that men obsess over when they hate what they desire and desire what they cannot possess.

For this scribe has read a great many of these accounts and taken away another lesson: that to be a woman is to have your story misremembered. Discarded. Twisted.

Women are the forgotten spouses and unnamed daughters.

Ah yes, a certain degree of rebelliousness is expected from youth. It is why we have stories of treasure-seeking princesses and warrior women that end with the occasional happiness. But they are expected to end—with the boy, the prince, the sailor, the adventurer. The man that will take her maidenhood, grant her children, make her a wife. The man who defines her. He may continue his epic—he may indeed take new wives and make new children!—but women’s stories are expected to dissolve into a fog of domesticity . . . if they’re told at all. Amina’s

Men find it easier to believe they have been swindled by a witch than outwitted by a woman.