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

by Sheridan Prasso

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1586482149
• ISBN13: 9781586482145
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Thank you for writing this book, Ms. Prasso!

As an Asian American woman who has lived and travelled in Asia, I am so pleased that someone had the idea and courage to write a book like this!! When the film "Memoirs of a Geisha" came out, I was living in Japan. It was so interesting because on Western English websites and movie review sites etc, people loved this film! However, even though there was a hard marketing push for this film in Japan and it played up and down the country, Japanese people largely were not only disinterested in the fim, but couldn't relate to it and couldn't care for it. I feel that "The Asian Mystique" helps to explain massive incongruities like this that exist between the 'east and west'. Some reviewers have said that the main points of this book were that 'stereotypes are wrong' and that 'Asians are people too'. I disagree. What has been left out of their 'analyses' of the book is Prasso's main point: that Westerners have seen, described and promoted a paradigm of Asia, including Asian men and women, that has been completely twisted, incorrect and not based in reality. And that this paradigm not only continues today but is actively confirmed and reconfirmed. Prasso says at the end: let Asians describe themselves! This is a highly political idea, in that Westerners (I mean White Westerners) have rarely if ever, allowed other groups to explain and describe themselves in their own terms. I couldn't agree more! Everything that one hears about the East is filtered through a Western lens, whether it is books on Asia or movies (Letters from Iwo Jima, Kill Bill, Lost in Translation, etc). Although I'm American, I find that I'm constantly confronted with DEEPLY EMBEDDED stereotypes of what people who look Asian are supposedly like. If everyone knows that 'Asians are people too' as the 1 star reviewers said, then why do Asians and Asians of the diaspora keep having to challenge Western stereotypes? While some might find Prasso's analysis lacking somewhat, I doubt anyone can deny how spot on Prasso's description of the Asian Mystique is and how it plays out in real life, as painful, embarassing or difficult the stories might be to read about. I hope everyone has the chance to read it and really think about how these stereotypes have served to maintain the unequal social relationships between Westerners and Asians in Asia itself as well as Western countries where Asian descendants call home.

Intriguing and Persuasive

This is a highly perceptive book that will get you thinking about East and West in a differnt way. Cultural clashes of today, as Sherdan Prasso shows us, were built on long-held stereotypes that get tweaked in new ways every generation. A century ago, the dowager empress of China, already in her 70s, was portrayed in the West as an evil manipulator who killed off her rivals with poison cakes and indulged her sexual obsessions with a stable of male courtiers in the Forbidden City while the empire around her teetered at the edge of collapse. Tzu-hsi died in 1908, and the imperial system fell three years later. She certainly took part in perpetuating an out-dated regime. And with court politics quite secret, historians still debate whether she had a hand in the mysterious deaths of other contenders for China's throne, including her own son. Yet the wild stories printed in Western newspapers and books about Tzu-hsi were preposterous. And eagerly swallowed. When a British scholar later wrote of her unusual anatomy and bizarre sexual practices in repeated encounters with him - he was 29, she was 67 - his book was a sensation in Britain, widely accepted as proof that a true Dragon Lady had lived and breathed in the Orient. Not until 1974 was the book exposed as a hoax. The cultural divide between East and West is so vast, even in these days of easy travel and instant access, that people on either side often want to believe remarkably inaccurate notions about those on the other. The dowager empress' story was one instance, but current ones abound in books and movies, and particularly in the minds of Western men who pursue Asian women, writes Sheridan Prasso in this book, a compelling study of Occidental misperceptions about Asia. "Mystery and sex, fear, and desire," writes Prasso, a former Asia editor for Business Week. "The `Orient' has always meant lands far away, full of opulence and sensuality, danger, depravity, and opportunity." Prasso argues persuasively that Western misunderstanding of Asia is routinely based on fantasy, positive or negative. There are consequences in diplomacy and business, but most of all in personal relations, particularly for Western men afflicted with what she calls "yellow fever," the idealization of Asian women as feminine, attentive and seductive. Dragon ladies may exist, but sex goddesses abound. If "The Asian Mystique" is not as literary as the 1978 classic "Orientalism," Edward Said's masterful study of Western attitudes toward the East, it is a contemporary update on the same phenomenon: how Westerners project their hopes and fears onto whatever Asian culture they examine. A journalist who spent 15 years writing about Asia, Prasso is realistic about the dynamics of power and sensitive to the vagaries of culture and sex. Her energetic reporting and her depth of experience in Asia enables her to identify the superficial cultural practices that generate misperceptions, like politeness and self-denial in early encou

An insightful, illuminating work

As a feminist Asian-American male, I was delighted to see a book that dealt with issues of sexual stereotypes as they deal with Asians and Asian-Americans. In particular, I was pleased to see a thoughtful analysis of Asian male actors in Hollywood movies, who are lucky to get a hug from the female lead. Contrary to what another reviewer noted, I do not believe that Prasso reinforces the stereotypes. Instead, she notes how some might be true in some cases (ie. many Asian women looking towards Western men as their ideal mates). At the same time, she shows plenty of examples of three-dimensional women who have interests, experiences, and desires which do not conform to traditional stereotypes. The book, to me, seems to try to walk the narrow line between ignoring and accepting stereotypes. Yes, there are cultural differences between some Asian peoples and Westerners, but there are great similarities between the dreams and desires of Asian women and women elsewhere in the world. No, Asian women are not all sex-crazed prostitutes, though there are those who exploit and are exploited by that stereotype. The solution, if there is any, seems to me to be legitimate communication between potential mates. Coming to grips with cultural miscommunications (public displays of affection are rare/frowned upon in certain areas) can result in more genuine relationships between real equals, not superficial connections between illegitimate superiors and inferiors.

Simply amazing

As a Viet Kieu, I am impressed by Sheridan's knowledge of Asian women and i read with delight and deep interest her book "Asian Mystique." It is well written, concise and deep in knowledge as well as in thought. No one in the past has dug deeper into the Asian woman psyche than she has in her book. Asian women are far from being simple or submissive, as the tale goes. They are not only subtle and gentle, but also complex, goal oriented, calculating and can be domineering. They have been known to topple kings, emperors, and governments in the past without even holding officially a position of power. They therefore are not weak, but simply display self-controlled inner strength. In Vietnam, they are known as the Noi Tuong (Minister of the Interior: they run and control the household) compared to the Ngoai Tuong (man: Foreign Minister dealing with outside business). Their real power lies in their pulling the strings behind the scenes, in an unsuspected, unacknowledged, and at times Machavellian manner. The author's book, which attempts to unravel the Asian woman psyche, is an important tribute to the often misjudged and underestimated Asian women. It is a work of art and labor as well as a literary achievement. In time I'm sure it will turn out to be a bestseller.

an enthralling study

the best popular and informed approach to a difficult, timely subject. Prasso approaches her subject with sensitivity, nuanced understanding and serious appreciation for the ways America understood and misunderstood Asian women. A fine read!