The Red Tent in Womankind Worldwide Book Group

Apr 11, 2013 Alexa rated it did not like it

Shelves: fab-13

I feel like there must be something severely lacking in my claim to womanhood, but I just don’t get this novel. I don’t get the point of it, and I most certainly don’t get why so many women I know rave about it. Perhaps if I had read it when I was considerably younger I might be able to see it as some sort of paean to the mystical untapped power of womankind, rather like The Mists of Avalon was, in my teenage years. Now though, it’s just a somewhat tedious tale of one woman’s life. Her early yea I feel like there must be something severely lacking in my claim to womanhood, but I just don’t get this novel. I don’t get the point of it, and I most certainly don’t get why so many women I know rave about it. Perhaps if I had read it when I was considerably younger I might be able to see it as some sort of paean to the mystical untapped power of womankind, rather like The Mists of Avalon was, in my teenage years. Now though, it’s just a somewhat tedious tale of one woman’s life. Her early years with her mothers have some touch of Romantic power to them, but in the end these women are just servants and breeders to their men-folk. Somehow the fact that they get to take three days off every month is supposed to make up for the rest of their drudgery? (view spoiler) And because their lives are so otherwise horrible this is considered a holiday! This book appears to have some historical accuracy behind it, but without any citations I’m left wondering about that. Fawzia Koofi gives a much more accurate picture of the brutality of this sort of life on women in her account of growing up in Afghanistan in Letters to My Daughters, and thankfully she’s a lot less heavy on the nostalgic mysticism. Most of this book is completely plotless, except for one horrific incident that maybe gets five pages in the text, and then we meander on with a life of some good stuff and some bad stuff and a whole lot of boring stuff. But does it ever really say anything about the condition of women then or now? Our heroine makes some passing comment about how different she finds the relationship between the sexes in Egypt, but she appears to have no reflections on which aspects might be better or worse, how this might reflect upon women's sense of self or power. If this is supposed to be a treatise to women’s power, why do they give up that power without any objections?

What does this book think it is saying about religion? Were these folks truly having prophetic dreams? And if so why? Does it all come down to worshipping the right gods? Or is it just one of those things that some people are blessed/cursed with? The complete lack of moral judgment here amazes me. And the ritual of becoming a woman? When one looks at it with the cold gaze of analysis, one begins to see just how horrific it was. (view spoiler) The more I think about it the more creeped out I get. Or was the author perhaps trying to subtly show why the idolatrous gods of her ancestors were indeed all wrong for her people?

So please, somebody, tell me what I’m missing.
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Dec 15, 2014 Alisia rated it really liked it

I read this more than ten years ago when I was in grad school. I don't normally re-read books, but I truly enjoyed it the first time, and wanted to give it another go around before watching the movie.

I find it funny that so many reviewers criticize Ms. Diamant for taking too much creative license. What do they think fiction is?! ...more

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