Then again, all the descriptions of childbirth with prehistoric medicine (herbs, mystical chanting, a lot of padding to staunch blood flow) was an effective antidote for any real wistfulness or romanticism of that time. Diamente describes how her characters make their meals, how they spend their times spinning and weaving wool from their flocks, and it feels believable.Īlso, I wish my mother had fed me bread dipped in honey or sweet wine when I was upset or sick.
I don’t know if it’s a realistic representation of pre-historic culture (then again: Bible fanfic), but it feels real, the way the best-written books feel. That doesn’t mean it has no power, that it wasn’t exactly what I needed when I discovered it. It is shameless in seizing the tropes of sisterhood and ancient world mythology, in celebrating women’s power.
And the voices aren’t just created for Leah and Rachel, but for their slave handmaids, Zilpah and Bilhah. It gives women a voice in a historical era where they had little to no voice, especially in the Hebrew texts.There’s a whole other side that men ignored or buried, and I am here to tell you that side. It takes a story told as holy scripture, and it tells the reader, that’s not the whole story. It fills the most important purpose of any retelling or fanfic: subversion.The Red Tent is, I firmly believe, the best piece of published Bible fanfic out there.
There’s not much to it, in the biblical canon. I grew up knowing the story of Jacob’s wives and children with the rest of the Old Testament tales, but in case you haven’t, here’s a refresher on Dinah, the narrator of The Red Tent.
It was an exhilarating and enriching form of rebellion, as entrenched as I still was in a conservative, fundamentalist Baptist environment. It spurred my first awakening as a feminist. A Baptist preacher’s daughter lent it to me early in high school, and it was not just formative - it changed my goddamn life.
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