 "Suffocated and Safe" | 2008-06-26 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1S78P8RQS4NX5 |
Ms. Mernissi states that "The frontier is in the mind of the powerful", and that "...looking for the frontier has become my life's occupation. Anxiety eats at me whenever I cannot situate the geometric line organizing my powerlessness." This book is a very moving first-hand account of the secluded life of a young girl, born into a prosperous family in Fez in the 1940s. She is confined in a harem, which in this case consists of the women and children of an extended family, imprisoned behind walls and a guarded gate for their own protection in an occupied city. "When Allah created the earth, said Father, he separated men from women, and put a sea between Muslims and Christians for a reason. Harmony exists when each group respects the prescribed limits of the other. Trespassing leads only to sorrow and unhappiness. But women dreamed of trespassing all the time. The world beyond the gate was their obsession."
Throughout the book she illustrates the ongoing attempts of her mother and grandmother to discover the outside world, establish their individual identity, and exercise some tiny bit of control over their own lives. Her mother listens to radio Cairo when the men are out of the house, and despite her mother-in-law's disapproval, embroiders birds on her clothes instead of traditional patterns. Although her mother is barred from attending literacy classes by a vote of the leading men of the family, Fatima and her cousins are allowed to attend public school when the country's religious leaders vote to support women's education and schools are opened to female students. Suddenly the outside world is open to her, but she still feels powerless. Her Aunt Habiba provides liberating advice: "It is not enough to reject this courtyard - you need to have a vision of the meadows with which you want to replace it." Fatima must now discover her unique, personal dream, the vision that would give her direction and light. This is a radical change: she is not just a daughter and future wife and mother, she is also an individual with unique and valuable gifts to share with the world.
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| "An Insider's View of Harem Life" | 2008-06-12 |
| - Reviewed By psoup4 |
| I read this after returning from Morocco. The insight into what life used to be like for most women enriched my understanding of the culture which I found fascinating. I'd spoken with several women while in the country who are "liberated" but heard none of the story of the lives of women who adhere to the old traditions. I saw many others who still live behind closed walls. This is the story of the latter group's growing up years that I couldn't have gotten otherwise. |
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| "excellent book about harems and women in Morocco" | 2008-05-04 |
| - Reviewed By marzipan_moon_books |
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.
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| "Silent dreams of flight" | 2007-04-04 |
| - Reviewed By pestowakeupqueen |
"Dreams of Trespass" is Fatima Mernissi's memoir of her childhood growing up in a domestic harem in Fez, Morocco. She lived with her father and uncles and their many wives and children. This book focuses mainly on the role of the women in the family and Mernissi writes vividly of their daily lives and their dreams of "trespassing" through the gates of the family complex into the outside world. Despite their powerless position in the larger world of men, the women claim their own power within the family through storytelling and instilling in their own daughters a sense of independence and a thirst for travel and adventure.
In the West, when we think of the word "harem," images of exotic palaces where men keep hundreds of wives and concubines come to mind. Rarely do we picture Mernissi's "domestic harems" where generations in an extended family live out their rather ordinary daily lives. "Dreams of Trespass" is a refreshing correction to that Western image of women kept as slaves to be used solely for the pleasure of men. This is not to say that Mernissi paints an idyllic picture of harem life. She is quite clear about the womens' position and the hardships in their lives. But Mernissi shows that the women in her family never allowed that to make them slaves. Physically, they may have been property, but through their "Dreams of Trespass," they found other ways to free themselves. |
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 "A Bore!" | 2007-02-19 |
| - Reviewed By User: A12QZ4DZKTHHUW |
| I couldn't help but fall asleep whilst reading this book. I only was able to go through about a little over a half, mostly because I was required to read it. Generally, the book is about a middle eastern girl living in a Harem and surrounded by the conflicting Western Power, the French Army. Lots of battles with tradition and western cultures, and primarily about the rift between men and women. So you're in for a subtle yet quite obvious gender conflict, which was in my opinion awfully sexist (I know it's from the view of a woman but that doesn't take away from the fact that she explicitly tries to write as if she were a child again with "innocence" yet fails because of her mature agenda). The author, Mernissi, spends about 10-15 pages per chapter driveling on about the most useless facts or coincidences. Just when you think she's reaching her point and finally bear fruit, it's the start of a new chapter and another take on a topic or segment of her life that is completely irrelevant. |
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| "Middle Eastern Dance Class" | 2006-11-11 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1B43MYQKBFFQ9 |
| The book was great and interesting. Amazon sent it very quick. |
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