Review of Dreams of Trespass

Mernissi masterfully tells the tale of Sheherezad's drastic transformation from an intelligent, political heroine in the East to a sex crazed, passive slave in the West. She explores her transformation from east to west as she discovers for herself how this change progressed. In exploring the Orientalist paintings, early tranlsations of the 1001 Nights (or the Arabian Nights), and her encounters with the fantasies of Western men she is able to explore male-female dynamics in our inherently different cultures. Even though nothing she said was what I would consider "new news" to me she has a way of giving you a new perspective. Things that now seem painfully obvious to me are the results of her gracefull way with words and her ability to re-examine the the views. She explored dimenisions of this issue which had never even occured to me before, all in her entertaining and fluid style. I really enjoyed reading this book and I think anyone studying middle eastern dance history as well as midlle eastern culutre would benefit from this book. She does mention the transformation of bellydance from sacred to profane. I was not expecting anything about bellydance to be mentioned but was glad to see it. There's a lot of good actual historical fact written into the book which I really liked reading. I was not as enthralled with this book as I was with her book "Dreams of Trespass" but this is still a great book to read. I read through it easily and quite fast. It took me two days to finish and that's all while being a full time mom to 2 toddlers and a full time college student. It is not an overly large book or anything but it's easy to get caught up in. For me the whole book was the good part that I didn't want to put down.