Thank heavens for the alternate universe of books

The holidays are upon us after a beautiful, golden fall, the days looking increasingly November-y, and, wow, what a crazy time it is in the world.

Since Nov. 6, each day brings tidings worse and more surreal than the day before. Many have been trying to save what sanity they have left by ignoring the news; not easy in a world where information blows in like chilly winds through the clapboards. Lately, instead of turning on the TV in the morning, I’ve been retreating to the quiet living room, coffee cup and (you guessed it) book in hand, for a few minutes of peace before the day starts in earnest. Because a book for me is, among other things, escape … comfort … immersion in another place and time.

As my father used to say, “Don’t pull the wool off my eyes.” Exactly. Thank heavens for the alternate universe of books.

Recently, a friend told me she was rereading “The Red Tent.” What an interesting idea, I thought. And then: What a good idea.

“The Red Tent,” which many of us read in the late 90s, was a book club favorite, a Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle. USA Today and Entertainment Weekly bestseller. I usually pass books along or donate them to rummage sales, so imagine my surprise when I found a copy gathering dust on my office shelf. I began it immediately and soon found myself utterly swept up in another world, another time, another culture, a completely different life. Just what the doctor ordered.

The novel, by Anita Diamant, is a story narrated by Dinah, a character originally found in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, the only named daughter of Leah and Jacob, best known for being abducted and raped by Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, while visiting some women in a neighboring town, and the bloodbath that ensued. Hers is a troubling story, but Diamant does a brilliant job retelling it. She did a ton of research, but says she doesn’t think of the novel as “scholarly or theological.”

“From the start,” she says, “I intended to depart from the text to make the story my own.”

Rich and beautiful, colorful and intense, one is left, after reading this novel, with a strong sense not only of the difficulties, hardships and restrictions experienced by women living in the Near East in ancient times, but also of the profound sense of bonding, comfort and identity that existed in women’s circles at that time.

In case you are wondering, the titular red tent was where menstruating women would go to spend a few days in each other’s company, away from men, resting and communing with one another, telling stories, returning their blood to the earth that bore them.

Says Dinah, “In the ruddy shade of the red tent, the menstrual tent, they ran their fingers through my curls, repeating the escapades of their youths, the sagas of their childbirths. Their stories were like offerings of hope and strength poured out before the Queen of heaven, only these gifts were not for any god or goddess — but for me.”

Because Dinah’s father had a number of wives (kind of a thing back then), Dinah had many mothers. “I can still feel how my mothers loved me,” she says. “I have cherished their love always. It sustained me. It kept me alive. Even after I left them, and even now, so long after their deaths, I am comforted by their memory.”

Dinah lived to carry her mothers’ tales into the next generation, “but the stories of my life were forbidden to me,” she says, “and that silence nearly killed the heart in me. I did not die but lived long enough for other stories to fill up my days and nights.”

“And now you come to me,” she says, to us, her readers, “women with hands and feet as soft as a queen’s, with more cooking pots than you need, so safe in childbed and so free with your tongues. You come hungry for the story that was lost. You crave words to fill the great silence that swallowed me, and my mother, and my grandmothers before them.”

This is a book for the ages. A book for the late 90s. And a book for 2024, when women have come so far since Dinah’s world, yet are finding themselves (ourselves) facing dangerous restrictions on reproductive freedom, preparing for a president who vows to protect women whether they like it or not, and experiencing surging sexist and abusive media attacks, like “Get back to the kitchen” and “Your body, my choice.”

Seriously?

Bring on the red tent, I say. Can we get one set up in Charlotte? I highly recommend reading, re-reading or re-rereading this fine, transporting, beautifully crafted novel.

Another book that’s been gathering dust on my shelves is the universally acclaimed, rapturously reviewed, instant New York Times bestseller “Know My Name’” by Chanel Miller, survivor of the famous Stanford case that was all over the news back in 2015. The one where two bystanders interrupted the assault, called for help and pinned the attacker to the ground.

Glennon Doyle writes, “I opened ‘Know My Name’ with the intention to bear witness to the story of a survivor. Instead, I found myself falling into the hands of one of the great writers and thinkers of our time. I could not put this phenomenal book down.”

The Washington Post says, “A gut-punch, and in the end, somehow, also blessedly hopeful.”

Miller is a gifted, wrenchingly honest writer. Her book takes us from when she was a child too shy to play an animal in the school play about a safari. Instead, “I was grass,” she writes. “I’ve never thrown my own birthday party.”

She goes on, “I’ll put on three sweaters before I ask you to turn on the heat. I’m okay losing board games. I stuff my coins haphazardly into my purse to avoid holding up the checkout line. When I was little, I wanted to grow up and become a mascot, so I’d have the freedom to dance without being seen.”

This is the person who was called into the national spotlight at the age of 22, after she was assaulted by a Stanford student outside of a frat house, at which point “my old life left me, and a new one began.”

In this startling memoir, we are told the truth. The truth of what happened, as well as the deeper, sustaining truth of what it means to speak up, speak out and to claim one’s place in this world. The truth that Alexander Che alludes to in the frontispiece: “It is our duty, to matter.”

This memoir took my breath away. First, with what happened out of the clear blue during a college frat party, and then with what came after. And then, with the way Miller, in the span of a few minutes, minutes in which she was unconscious, went from being a daughter, sister, worker, college grad, girlfriend, friend, to being “Rape Victim, Emily Doe.”

And then, with the deeper story of just how she survived, and persevered, and spoke up and out, despite a serious aversion to attention and the sustained pushback of many, fighting for her life in a culture that doesn’t make any of this easy.

“When society questions a victim’s reluctance to report, I will be here to remind you that you ask us to sacrifice our sanity to fight outdated structures that were designed to keep us down. Victims do not have the time for this. Victims are also students, teachers, parents, who can’t give up work or education. The average adult can barely find time to renew their license at the DMV. It is not reasonable to casually demand that victims put aside their lives to spend more time pursuing something they never asked for in the first place. This is not about the victims’ lack of effort. This is about society’s failure to have systems in place in which victims feel there is a probable chance of achieving safety, justice and restoration rather than being retraumatized, policy shamed, psychologically tormented, and verbally mauled. The real question we need to be asking is not, Why didn’t she report. The question is: Why would you?”

In the end, despite the shock, the indignity, the agony, the tremendous toll that was taken on the life of this young woman and her loved ones, this memoir is a triumph. A hard-won, beautifully articulated answer to the question: Why fight?

Highly, highly recommend.

Happy Thanksgiving. Fight on.