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

Sheridan Prasso

Perseus Books Group, 2005 - Social Science - 437 pages

The Orient. In Western fantasies, it is the exotic, sensual, dangerous, decadent land of dreams - where submissive women cater to every desire, where conquerable men pose no masculine threat, where compliant nations fall into line under Western dominance. And while we might like to think we're way too sophisticated now to fall for images and illusions like these, the truth is, as Sheridan Prasso demonstrates in this book, they persist - in Western literature, stage, and screen, and in the minds of us all.
The Asian Mystique lays out a challenge to see Asia and Asians as they really are, with unclouded, de-eroticized eyes. It uncovers the origins of these Western fantasies in the sexually-charged history of West-East contact; it examines Hollywood's images of the Dragon Lady, Dominatrix, Geisha Girl, Suzie Wong, and others, exploring the expectations they generate and why they persist; it tears apart the stereotyped images of Asian males as emasculated and asexual; and it probes the phenomenon of "Yellow Fever" as well as the underlying "race-ism" and other social factors that fuel it.
Required reading for anyone with interest in or interaction with Asia or Asian-origin people, as well as any serious student or practitioner of East-West relations. The Asian Mystique demands that we move beyond our misty-eyed myths of exotic difference.

What people are saying

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

User Review  - Jennifer - Goodreads

A discussion of the image of Asian women in the West. Prasso covers a wide variety of topics and areas, and has some interesting insights. However, by a sheer fluke, I happened to have just watched a ...

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

User Review  - Joseph - Goodreads

Well I haven't quite finished my review or even started this but can someone suggest to me an equivalent but in more regards to the asian male? She only dedicated one chapter the subject and I ...

About the author

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.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient
• Author: Sheridan Prasso
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group, 2005
• ISBN: 1586482149, 9781586482145
• Length: 437 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Minority Studies