The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient

The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient | Sheridan Prasso | Understanding How the World Views Me

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The Asian Mystique...

	The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient Sheridan Prasso, 2005 - 437 pages average customer review:based on 38 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Rogue-men of Asia: Listen to Prasso

I am an American man who has lived and worked in Asia over a span of thirty years. I recall as a young man feeling overwhelmed with excitement as I came face-to-face with Asian women, my heart filled with ardent romantic and sexual stereotypes. It was good to be a young man in Asia. Often, I was simply a very bad boy in Asia.

As I grew older, I listened more to the Asian women I met, understood them as women trying to live lives of meaning and fulfillment, often amid confusion and contradiction in an Asia that was changing fast. Their challenges and dilemmas were, at heart, common to women everywhere. Seen deeper, they were common to the puzzling journey we all share, men and women alike, trying to make sense of this world, and figure out why we are even here, and what we should do while we're here.

Sheridan Prasso has touched me by reminding me of my own long Asian journey from stereotypes of women to seeing the dignity of the individual. I appreciate the honesty of the way Prasso wrote this book: not in scholarly seclusion, but on the streets of Asia, in the homes and in the bars and on the streets arm-in-arm with Asian women humble and proud, rich and poor, serene and lost. It is a mark of her decency that all of them trusted her, shared with her their inner hopes and fears, gave her whispered piercing insight into the mystic dignity at the center of their souls.

Men like the young me, consumed by passionate stereotypes, should read Prasso's tender book of revelations and feel at first irritated and ratted upon, then provoked to deeper thought, and finally pensive and uplifted to find our better selves, to understand that what we really want, in the end, is to understand and respect women, somehow knowing that is the only way we will be understood and respected by them.

As a young rogue and rake in Asia, I read occasionally of the distant new feminist movement in America. Betty Friedan was one of its pioneers, and she died yesterday. Friedan helped create the society of equality for women in America that at first confused many men like me, and drove us ever more escapist toward the comforting fiction that Asian women were easy toys. Sheridan Prasso's "The Asian Mystique" is a spiritual descendant of Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique:" it describes, explains, informs, decodes - and, going straight to the heart, this: makes us feel one with those who were strangers before. In the end, Prasso conveys the reality of Asian women, women who are complex and dignified as they deal - in the way we all do - with opportunities that are far narrower than they hoped for when young.

I can see in some of the other reviews of Prasso's book the grumbling of unreconstructed rakes who want to stave off her stark message and keep sweet stereotypes alive. After all, they didn't flee Freidan's message only to get clothes-lined by Prasso's. Well, let time work: over time, Friedan's message of respect prevailed, and in time, I think Prasso's will, too.

Meanwhile, let me offer this comfort to all you unreconstructed rakes: we men will be better off when we understand Asian women as Prasso wants us to. Think of the time you awoke in Bangkok, all ardor spent, she asleep beside you, as morning broke over the Chaopraya River, and in the loneliness of early dawn, all you really wanted, deep down, was to be understood, respected, loved. Wishing it were so, you held her close while she slept, and while the marketplace below came alive with chants and bickering, she dreamed her dream, wishing it were so.

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Understanding How the World Views Me

As a third-generation Asian American woman, I read The Asian Mystique with particular interest. Naturally I had a personal desire to better understand the stereotype that has been pinned on me throughout my life. In this book I found answers through thorough documentation and careful explanation. I recognized and appreciated the anthropologist's precise and scientific approach to the subject, as a less objective a treatment would have rendered the information questionable at best. By the end of the book I couldn't help thinking that this was the work of a very courageous woman.

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Well Written Examination of Orientalism

Perhaps some of the previous reviewers don't realize that this excellent and well-written examination of Orientalism in the East Asian context is based upon the seminal theory of the noted academic Edward Said. But rather than using inaccessible academic languages and literary analysis, as Said did, this book brings the concept to a level that is readable by everyone, exploring not only the misguided ways that Asians are portrayed in Western culture, but the consequences of relationships, business interactions, foreign policy, and all kinds of cross-cultural interactions.

The result is a rich, in-depth exploration of the reality of Asia today juxtaposed against the exotic portrayals of Asian people in Western film, media and pop culture. The book does not condemn cross-cultural relationships by any means - and in fact points out that a little "mystique" can lend a lot to relationships - but rather it challenges all cross-cultural interactions between East and West to be based on realities rather than expectations (such as of "submissiveness" or "subservience") perpetuated by cultural images from Hollywood and the media. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding Asian cultures as well as the origins of Western culture's mistaken perceptions.

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Great Book but some facts needed to been explored more

I am a Japanese Historian and I feel that Sheridan Prasso does a good job explaining the myths. She writes very effectively in this book describing the stereotypes. I truly enjoyed reading it for what she intended the reader to get out of it.

I did find some mistakes in the book and feel that she clearly could have researched this better. My one true example is when she mentions the TV miniseries Shogun and states that Toronaga was Mariko's husband. Lord Toronaga was her master. Lord Buntoro was her husband. He was the one that beat her and tried to impress/intimidate Blackthorne by shooting arrows from inside to a post outside. Anyone who has seen this movie clearly knew that he was her husband. So I found that disheartening that she did not research this better.

There were a few other points that I felt like her comparisons were a little bit off but as I stated in the beginning this was a good book.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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