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The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our Fantasies of the Exotic O |  |
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The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our Fantasies of the Exotic O | |
Few Westerners escape the images, expectations and misperceptions that lead us to see Asia as exotic, sensual, decadent, dangerous, and mysterious. Despite ? and because of ? centuries of East-West interaction, the stereotypes of Western literature, stage, and screen remain pervasive icons: the tea-pouring, submissive, sexually available geisha girl; the steely cold dragon lady dominatrix; as well as the portrayal of the Asian male as effeminate and asexual. These "Oriental" illusions color our relations and relationships in ways even well-respected professional "Asia hands" and scholars don't necessarily see.
The Asian Mystique lays out a provocative challenge to see Asia and Asians as they really are, with unclouded, deeroticized eyes. It traces the origins of Western stereotypes in history and in Hollywood, examines the phenomenon of ?yellow fever,' then goes on a reality tour of Asia's go-go bars, middle-class homes, college campuses, business districts, and corridors of power, providing intimate profiles of women's lives and vivid portraits of the human side of an Asia we usually mythologize too well to really understand. It strips away our misconceptions and stereotypes, revealing instead the fully dimensional human beings beyond our usual perceptions. The Asian Mystique is required reading for anyone with interest in or interaction with Asia or Asian-origin people, as well as any serious student or practicioner of East-West relations.
作者简介 Sheridan Prasso has been writing about Asia for more than fifteen years, most recently as Asia Editor and a Senior News Editor for BusinessWeek. Her articles have appeared in Time, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications. An advisor to the Asia Society's Social Issues Programs and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Prasso currently lives in New York City.
媒体推荐 "... a highly provocative book that challenges the cultural and political stereotypes of Asia that have dominated Western thinking." -- -- Elizabeth C. Economy, Director, Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
"A compelling book on a subject that touches on all aspects of life in Asia, including economics." -- Joseph E. Stiglitz, author of Globalization and Its Discontents
"A compelling study of Occidental misperceptions about Asia." -- Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2005
"A highly provocative book that challenges the cultural and political stereotypes of Asia." -- Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director, Asia Studies Council on Foreign Relations
"Engaging." -- Library Journal, May 1, 2005
"Incisive, probing, and wonderfully readable... Prasso's book is the equivalent of a page-turning potboiler." -- David Henry Hwang, author of M. Butterfly
"Prasso explains the symbiotic nature of Western fantasy and Asian fulfillment." -- Booklist, April 15, 2005
"Valuable as a study of manufactured imagery and the racism that comes with and of it." -- Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2005
"?compelling? energetic reporting and depth of experience in Asia enable her to identify the superficial cultural practices that generate misunderstandings?" -- Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2005
A persuasive, timely book. Unwavering and pointed, Prasso makes clear the destructive nature of stereotypes about Asia. -- Boston Globe, June 6, 2005
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly
Prasso, a former Business Week Asia editor, asks if Westerners can look objectively at the Eastern region, blinded as they are by "issues of race and sex, fantasy and power." It's this worldview-one the author admits succumbing to and feeling a "sense of loss" in giving up-that clouds cross-cultural relations. Prasso's ambitious agenda focuses on both Asian women and our perceptions of them, exploring the historical and pop cultural roots of the "Asian Mystique" and ending with a "reality tour of Asia." Her stories about the lives of Asian women from diverse cultures and socio-economic backgrounds are compelling. The Japanese woman who inspired Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha shares her distaste for the novel's "misinterpretation" of her "flower and willow world." A Chinese investment banker struggles with modern demands and traditional expectations. With the author in tow, a Filipina prostitute navigates a seedy red-light district. Prasso has an almost voyeuristic fascination with sexual mores, and the result is a frank, at times graphic, exploration of how some Asian women cope with stereotyping-and with Western males looking for one-night stands. But when the author moves from reportage to social anthropological analysis, the book loses focus. Self-conscious ruminations, such as the incongruity of dancing with Filipina prostitutes to Madonna's "Like a Virgin," sometimes intrude and distract. In addition, Prasso never really gets a grip on the Asian Mystique's effects on foreign policy, concluding, not surprisingly, that it is "much harder to measure and more difficult to prove." Nevertheless, Prasso's work and travels have opened her eyes, and this book might do the same for others.
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From Booklist
Prasso, who has lived in Phnom Penh and Hong Kong and written for Business Week, nearly turns the fascination of Western men with Asian sexuality into a subject of numbing correctness. Fortunately, though, her determination to explore "our relationships and interactions, our misconceptions and stereotypes" doesn't suck the life from her compelling topic--perhaps because she is not above taking readers into the girlie bars of Bangkok and Manila, the personals ("Red Hot Asians") of the Village Voice, the cinemas and TV screens of West and East, even the home of Mineko Iwasaki, who inspired Arthur Golden's best-selling Memoirs of a Geisha. Using this frame of reference effectively, Prasso explains the symbiotic nature of Western fantasy and Asian fulfillment--often to great profit--of that fantasy, the roles that Asian women play and defy in the West, even the dangerous implications of this still-active fantasy upon global politics. Especially interesting are her observations on the emasculated role of Asian men in Western media--picture, for instance, Jackie Chan even kissing a Western woman. Alan Moores
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