Customer Reviews

Scheherazade Goes West

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After reading a few other critiques on this title, a few reviewers may need to reconsider the intent of the text. Mernissi is hardly deliniating a definitive narrative on the sexual mentality of men/women or East/West; however, she provides a series of impressions that can create a complex, intriguing innerdialogue as well as spark useful discussion among adults interested in the related topic dynamics. Overall a wonderfully written book intermingling Mernissi's personal experiences, history, literature, and art. I highly endorse this book.

Fatema Mernissi's "Scheherezade Goes West" is an incredible book. I could not put it down once I began reading it. I highly recommend it......I keep talking about it to everyone I know.

I think that her observations have quite a bit of truth behind them, even with regards to her ideas of the Western world. A few critics of the book mentioned how if Fatema had truly observed women in the U.S. she would see that we came in all sizes. That is true! But still, don't we all feel the pressure put on us to be a size 6? To wear makeup? To look like a supermodel? Why are eating disorders more prevalent? A friend of mine told me she was anorexic in high school, but that having an eating disorder was "normal", since it appeared almost every girl in her high school had some sort of eating disorder. How sad! In high school I took sanctuary in athletics---and most athletic women could never fit into the American standard ideals of beauty. So we pride ourselves in being fit and strong.

When are we going to learn to appreciate ourselves for what we are worth?

Mernissi's book is one that makes you think. I think it is magnificent. Read it with an open mind, and use her observations to challenge and question what you know. I also enjoyed having some sort of insight into the Islamic world. I feel we really misunderstand Islam. We base most of our views on the actions and beliefs of the extremists. I hope that because of the events in our world today, us westerners and non-muslims will try to educated ourselves and learn about Islam with an open mind and an un-biased heart.

This book gives the Western woman a completely new context to view ourselves in/through. To quote Mernissi, "travel is not about fun but about learning, about crossing boundaries and mastering the fear of strangers, about making the effort to understand other cultures and thereby empowering yourself."

In a patrarchial society (whether Christian or Muslim) male erotic needs,and their need for control and "safty" in male-female relationships dictates how women are taught to think about themselves. "Travel (mentally widening your horizons) helps you figure out who you are and how your own culture controls you."

This book is about claiming freedom, the freedom for women to think about who they are and about the courage it takes to push through the unexamined female prisons of Western insularity (just as Muslim women push through the insularity of the Harem and the veil) to view ourselves in a wider place and choose who we will be and who our daughters will be. As the book says, "then who are we if we don't control our own images?" The author is delightful, feminine and funny and wonderfully astute.

I hope the author takes another, longer tour of the US. Most of her conclusions about the "harems" of "Western men" are only applicable to European men, far better educated and more culturally refined than us guys here. We surely do have or desire our harems today--a man's "stable" of pretty women who will let him get away with making the rounds as often as time and money allows. A huge issue she raises is control: how do guys keep their women? And how do those women, who at some level consent to being kept, fight back and control their man? What role does beauty play, what role intelligence, what about economic empowerment, and what about religious values? How does jealousy impact the decisions made by both the women and the man? And perhaps most importantly, is the US truly making progress toward women and men treating each other as equals? Or have we just found more sophisticated ways of manipulating each other? The author suggests Westerners should be much slower to criticize Islam, because we have our own problems that are as bad or worse. Very thought-provoking.

Fatima Mernissi's book, Scheherazade Goes West, is one of those rare books that you start reading and simply can not put down, not wanting it to end.
It is witty and delightfull book but more important, it touches upon some fundemental questions about the meeting of East and West, in art, fiction, as well as in every day life, questions that have never been addressed like this before.
Mernissi does something which is both rare and refreshing: she dares ask questions and her quest for answers takes her (and the reader) to a journey which ultimatly touches upon the universal questions concerninig not only the complicated, mystifaying relations between East and West, but also, and far more intersting, between Men and Women, and how they see each other from both sides of the geographical, cultural distance.

I am neither American nor Arab but this book is a must-read for every woman in the twenty-first century, a true teaching text.

For all single women out there, gift yourself this book before next Valentine's Day and read it with an open mind. You might learn more than a dozen dating manuals. By refusing to discuss her own life in reference to the men who passed through it, Mernissi shows the way to liberation.

Reviewers who think Mernissi needs to travel, please try to hang out more with Muslim women.

Author Fatema Mernissi is particularly personable in how she approaches the subject of beauty, women, and male desire through the concept of harem. She brings to light a fascinating East/West dichotomy that might surprise Westerners. Relating conversations and museum trips with friends from Europe, she contrasts their views with Middle Eastern men and draws some conclusions about core beliefs concerning women, power, and beauty. Basically, she finds that historically Western/European men desire women who are beautiful and dumb, and Middle Eastern men prize women who are beautiful and smart, e.g. Sheherazade. She drives home her point with the account of a particularly painful experience buying clothing here in the U.S, and she proposes that the West, with all of its freedoms, places its own type of "veil" on women. As a Western woman I certainly see her point. However, I am not prepared to hold Middle Eastern men as a higher standard. I think Mernissi's book is a great place to start the conversation. All of her books wrestle with this subject and more and I enjoy her openness.

This book would have been much better if Mernissi had stuck with witty vignettes about her culture shock and humorous malentendus during her westward sojourn. After all, there are plenty of books by Yanks, Aussies, and Brits about "discovering" the orient. Instead, Mernissi takes it upon herself to try to solve mysteries that have plagued womankind for millennia and to rectify old wrongs.

According to Mernissi's epiphany, western men in order to build their self esteem need to portray women as stupid sexualized objects. Mernissi maintains that Arab men are really scared of women and that's why they felt a need to cloak and sequester them. In order to build her case she points out a few isolated incidents in history in which harem concubines rose up and killed their masters. The much more common scenario, not just in Arab countries, was for the concubine/courtesan to kill her rivals, and or her rivals' sons, not her benefactor. That was her only hope of advancing. Look up China's only empress, Wu Zetian. She made it to the top by ruthlessly killing her rivals and their children. My blood pressure began to rise as Mernissi continued to describe harem life as a glamorous slumber party, rather than imprisonment and sexual slavery.

Mernissi maintains that women in Muslim countries really have more rights than western women. To prove her case she cites some statistic that Saudi Arabia has a higher percentage of professional women than many western countries. Given Saudi Arabia's level of wealth and very rigid gender segregation it would be surprising if this were not the case. What she doesn't bother to mention is that in Saudi Arabia these women doctors, lawyers, and engineers are not allow to vote, drive, or leave the home without donning a tent and obtaining permission from a male relative.

Mernissi also plays apologist by splicing her book with some historical accounts of Christian treachery towards Muslims. It went both ways and at any rate it doesn't absolve all of the recent acts of terrorism.

Mernissi saves her bombshell for last: American culture itself is a hejib, a veil, for women. She bases this on a snooty experience she had in an upscale New York boutique in which a saleswoman informed her that she couldn't accommodate women over a size six. Ergo Mernissi infers that American women have been hobbled by misogynists in the fashion industry just the same as the women of Afghanistan who are forced to wear the burqua or Saudi women forced to wear the abbaya and hejib. I am an American borderline plus sizer and the only time I ever had a problem finding clothes big enough was in Southern China. I'm not denying that misogynists in the fashion industry and Hollywood have made inroads as far as conning women into feeling inadequate. The difference is that I can leave my home anytime I want wearing whatever I want and not have to worry about an acid attack from arrogant religious fanatics, as has happened in Pakistan and some other countries experiencing a surge in fundamentalism.

As a Muslim scholar, Fatema Mernissi gives us a fresh perspective on the women's positions in both the Islamic and Western world. She uses a rich variety of resources, from the writings of Kant to Persian miniatures, in a wonderfully written, thought provoking book. Mernissi has a vast knowledge and an immense curiosity, all mixed with common sense and a captivating writing style. I absolutely loved the book and highly recommend it.

A great book that gave me a new way to look at feminism. [close] A great book that gave me a new way to look at feminism.