I finished another novel. Since I'm not immediately on-call at the moment, I have really been enjoying being able to stay up until the wee hours of the morning just reading in bed.
The book I just finished is The Rent Tent, which is fictional story based on facts from the bible. The main character is Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, granddaughter of Rebecca and Isaac, and great-granddaughter of Abraham and Sarah. It tells the story of Dinah's life, including how she became a respected midwife. The red tent refers to an actual tent under which all the women would give birth and spend the days during their periods.
This book was first given to me to read during the summer before I started Mills, with the hope that I would join in on one of the many on-campus book discussions. It was a big deal at the time, because it got people talking about women in the bible, women's roles in modern society, and how there had been an assumption that women were once banished to the red tent because they were "unclean" and unfit to be around men while they were bleeding, but maybe the women would have interpreted it another way, like it was really an empowering experience when women got to take a break from their harsh daily life and just "be" among other women.
Anyway, I enjoyed reading the book again, with a new appreciation for the depiction of midwifery during biblical times, even if it is fictional.
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