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From Amazon
In 1940, harems still abounded in Fez, Morocco. They weren't the opulent, bejeweled harems of Scherezade, but the domestic sprawl of extended families encamped around a walled courtyard that marked the edges of women's lives. Though born into this tightly sheltered world, Fatimi Mernissi is constantly urged by her rebellious mother to spring beyond it. Worried that Mernissi is too shy and quiet, her mother tells her, "You must learn to scream and protest, just the way you learned to walk and talk." In Dreams of Trespass, an enjoyable weave of memory and fantasy, it is clear that Mernissi's fertile imagination let her slip back and forth through the gates that trapped her restive mother. She spins amiable, often improbable tales of the rigidly proper city harem in Fez and the contrasting freedoms of the country harem where her grandmother Yakima lives. There, one of Yakima's cowives rides like the wind, another swims like a fish, and Yakima relishes twitting the humorless first wife by naming a fat, waddling duck after her.
From Publishers Weekly
This rich, magical and absorbing growing-up tale set in a little-known culture reflects many universals about women. The setting is a "domestic harem"in the 1940s city of Fez, where an extended family arrangement keeps the women mostly apart from society, as opposed to the more stereotypical "imperial harem," which historically provided sex for sultans and other powerful court officials. Moroccan sociologist Mernissi ( Islam and Democracy ) charts the changing social and political frontiers and limns the personalities and quirks of her world. Here she tells of a grandmother who warns that the world is unfair to women, learns of the confusing WW II via radio news in Arabic and French, watches family members debate what children should hear, wonders why American soldiers' skin doesn't reflect Moroccan-style racial mixing and decides that sensuality must be a part of women's liberation. With much folk wisdom--happiness, the author's mother told her, "was when there was a balance between what you gave and what you took"--this book not only tells a winning personal story but also helps to feminize a much-stereotyped religion. Photos. BOMC and QPB selections.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Fantasy and the Hope,
By
This review is from: Dreams Of Trespass: Tales Of a Harem Girlhood (Paperback)
It is rare and hard to find a book like this. So emic, so true, so feminine. Through the simple stories of her life as a child, Mernissi shows us the falseness of Western stereotypes and the tragedy of Islamic sexism. She shows us what a true harem is- the pure companionship of women, and not the sexual lasciviousness which the Western imagination dreamed up in it's ideal of the exotic- in the process revealing far more the degradation of Western society than they anything true of Arabic culture. But she writes with great honesty about her own people as well, and the control that a woman is constantly placed under, perceived as the "devouring vagina" (as she writes in another work, Beyond the Veil), needing to be controlled and put into it's place for the protection of men. One sees here, not through telling, but through story, how Moroccan women have so little freedom to be who they desire in a world where all that is public is also male. But we also see the beauty of women together in that same society, and through that, can dream.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very sad,
By "ja7000" (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Dreams Of Trespass: Tales Of a Harem Girlhood (Paperback)
This is a great book that describes a world that is foreign both to nonMuslims and the vast majority of Muslims. The book describes a world where females are shut out from the world, locked in a house, unable to live a normal life. Many of the women are starved for affection as a result of having to share their husband with other women. The story of women deprived of the things that should be normal, everyday life (monogamous marriages, jobs, schooling, shopping, charity work, interacting with men), who retreat to fantasy worlds is truly depressing reading. One reviewer described this as "Islamic culture", which it most definitely is not. The seclusion of women is a preIslamic cultural practice that has no basis is Islamic teachings. Unfortunately Mernissi leaves the impression that this is common behavior in the Muslim world. 99% of Muslim men are monogamous and many Muslim women live lives not much different from those of western women. In the most populous Muslim nations such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, India etc. this kind of lifestyle is nonexistent. Men and women are not separated in daily life and mongamy is the norm. Men who practice polygamy for any other reason other than for the purpose of caring for orphans are violating Islamic principles, not following them. I'm also troubled to see some Muslims condemning this book. Wake up, take your heads out of the sand and realise that there are many Muslims twisting Islamic teachings to oppress women. Does it matter that Islam gave women lots of rights if some Muslim men forbid the exercising of those rights?
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Beautiful Story of Family, Love, and Strength,
By
This review is from: Dreams Of Trespass: Tales Of a Harem Girlhood (Paperback)
I began this book with many typical Western preconceived notions. I expected the exoticized harem of one sheik with many wives that we hear about in the movies and in literature. However, this discussion of a real harem without all the exotic trappings shows Mernissi's family life and her experiences growing up while finding her place in the world. It is a story of family, but also Mernissi's own feminist story of breaking through the patriarchal walls and gaining a higher education and social standing despite tradition. Telling the story from the perspective of a female child coming of age shows the reader how far Mernissi came from her childhood locked within the walls of the harem. Mernissi's mothers, aunts, and cousins, while not able to escape the harem themselves, plant the seeds within Mernissi that allow her to find her own path in the world outside the harem.
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