The Julia Alvarez book is the next book club selection we'll be discussing. It is a fictionalized story of four sisters who lived in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo and the death of three of them. I was looking over the discussion questions that were sent out to everyone as well as reviewing my own notes. The novel was written in 1994, but I have a hardback copy that I read. I became interested in one of my notes from page 121.
Maria Theresa, commonly called Mate, asks a person named Fela who is known for conjuring up spells if she has one that Mate could use on a bad person. Fela comes up with one in which you write the name of that person on a slip of paper and put it in your left shoe, then burn the paper and spread the ashes near the person. (The assumption here is that you walk around on the paper before you ultimately take it out and burn it.) Fela also says you put one in your right shoe for problems with someone you love.
What I found fascinating is that Fela says this spell works because Eve crushed the head of the serpent in Genesis 3:15 with her left foot. When I looked the passage up in the Bible, it had nothing stating clearly that this happened. But the study bible I used, went into a lot of detail about how important this passage was and what it meant. At that point, I stopped reading because obviously, I was getting into something that was not material to the story no matter interesting it might have been in the religious area. So I will have to return to it later.
This afternoon I spent out buying birthday cards and sympathy cards.
This evening I will be watching the State of the Union speech by the President.
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