Portrait of Orientalism

I can hardly look at an orientalist painting without inwardly cringing as I recall professors drumming the lessons of Edward Said into us during sophomore year...

Nevertheless, I love these portraits by Spanish orientalist Jose Tapiro y Baro, courtesy of the Orientalist Gallery.

A Tangerine Beauty

Profile at the Beach

Viejo Moro

Moor in a Headress

I'm not sure why the men look so bedraggled but the Tangerine woman truly is a marvel. She and the old man are by far my favorites of this set.

The tableaus of a blackamoor astride a tiger with a saber at his hip just make me laugh, while most odalisques leave me cold - except Matisse, but he's in another category altogether. But image that look like artists actually spent time in the "exotic" destinations they depict, that evidence their care for detail and authenticity, and that portray a great deal of life and emotion in their subjects, these I adore.

What do you think of Orientalist art?

Laughing Without An Accent is funny in any language!

Here's the scene:

husband: seated on the floor, back against the sofa, brow furrowed, eyes squinting, reading over 30 pages of online assigned reading. Grumpy.

wife: curled up on the couch. Open book in hand, biting on knuckles to keep from chuckling and eliciting yet another "what? What are you laughing at?" Suppressed chuckles crescendoing to giggles.

"Now why are you laughing?"
"It's this book, it's so funny!" She shows him the cover of Firoozeh Dumas' latest collection of short stories:

She reads to him a passage recounting the Paris-weary author's day-trip to Mont St. Michel as a teenager flying solo after her host family ditched her to spend their summer in Provence:

Sure, it looks pretty...

"Mont St. Michel, a quasi-island in Normandy, is the site of a magnificent chapel built in the tenth century. During low tide, visitors can walk to the site, but during high tide, Mont St. Michel becomes an isleand. The tide comes in at one meter per second, or as Victor Hugo described it, "a la vitesse d'un cheval au galop," which sounds so nice in French and not so bad in English, either, "as swiftly as a galloping horse." But that's not all! The tide comes with thick fog, creating constantly shifting quicksand. In other words, sayonara. I had read many descriptions of poor souls getting lost and finding themselves caught, not just in the rushing tide but in the troika of tide, fog, and quicksand. The only thing that could possibly make this scenario any more frightening would be the addition of dragons. I had to see this place." -pp 79-80.

Of course towards the end she had to stop, book clutched to her chest, every few seconds and suppress her laughter so she could continue, also reminding him of that time they'd scene Lonely Planet travel host Justine Shapiro nearly sink, panicking with a forced smile stretched across her face, into the Mont St. Michel sands (one can only imagine her camera man's suggestion: "hey Justine! Come stand over here and let's see what happens! I'll film you!").

But it'll eat you alive if you don't watch out!

His reaction: a peaked eyebrow and the statement: "I'm worried about your geeky tendencies..." followed by the admission, "but yes, that is funny."

Firoozeh Dumas has plenty of other stand-up worthy material too; family anecdotes about large gatherings of Middle Easterners on cruises, the travails of being translated and getting your work sold in your "homeland", the quirks of being in a multi-cultural family, things no longer said in English except by second-language-learners that will get them in trouble, and weird French foods.

I heartily agree with her views on education (in America, most teachers just want to be pals; in other countries you actually learn things from them) and her observations on American and Iranian society and the intricacies of negotiating your own route across the diverse on-ramps of your own personal highway of self-identity. I was surprised that she did not include any experiences with her French in-laws but perhaps that will emerge in the third book?

At any rate, this book, and Dumas' first collection of short stories, Funny in Farsi, is simply hillarious and a great read. I could hardly put it down and I'm still regaling my poor friends on skype with excerpts that are slightly un-P.C. but that eventually elicit at least a smile if not a throaty chuckle.

And Firoozeh, don't worry. I'd rather have you over for dinner any day over Khaled Hosseini (no offence, KH). I won't put you (or myself) through the strain of a pseudo-Persian meal; We can have couscous and buttermilk instead and chat about our geeky tendencies.

Images courtesy samorodov and mookiefl on Flickr.

Bright

I found pants to match this Nigerian chair!

The combo might just blind you momentarily.

Dashiki pants courtesy Thai Craft Warehouse on ebay. King's chair on 1st Dibs.

Moorish style at West Elm

You don't have to look far to see that moorish style remains in vogue, (is it the geometrics? the bold colors? the combination of detail that altogether can unify to create a cohesive simplicity?) though often distilled into a pared-down modern sensibility. I was floored to open the latest West Elm catalog and see just how many rooms they had styled into their fresh, West-coast look with a moorish vibe:

But I guess plain white walls are always a good canvas for "ethnic" styles...

What with those two-tone walls, moorish arched doorways, the faux-berber carpets, the bright red tajine (a nice touch, I thought -but do people actually use these to cook in?) and all the rest, it's pretty obvious that some of West Elms designers must've recently taken a trip to Marrakesh (even if only virtually) for this latest season.

This stuff is at least better than the typical Moroccan harem look that's so ubiquitous in stinky Moroccan restaurants (where the cooks are often Mexican), whose stained wall hangings and faux banquettes have absorbed the odors of years of diners spilling their couscous and mint tea all over the place. These rooms at least inspire a sense of sunlight and freshness that I more typically associate with real Moroccan cafes.

(Am I the only one bothered by the fact that they didn't manage to get the entire khamsa on the carpet? Like the designer slipped with the scissors and decided "what the hell, we'll just say I did that on purpose and charge 10% extra while we're at it?")

I immediately harangued my husband and our friend over coffee about how they should investigate the ways in which their culture is being appropriated; this naturally led to a visit to downtown Portland's own WE store, only to have my suspicions confirmed that such objects, though they might look Moroccan (or Moorish, slight difference, wouldn't you agree?) they're still made in India or China and lack that certain flare.

But I'd be lying if I didn't say that I wasn't particularly charmed by the overall look of the room, if not the actual furniture.

It's enough to convince me to finally get back to my much-neglected weekend project of many months ago...

But my favorite design detail of all is this stenciling on the walls...

A pretty cheap and quick way to make your living room vibrer a la marocaine...
If someone came out with these stencils I'd snap them right up and have arched doorways all over my apartment walls. Maybe one right over the t.v. set :) It'd be prettier than most of what I see on t.v. anyway.

All images courtesy West Elm.

Cheese lovers beware

At the risk of losing readers, and mostly only because two friends on opposite sides of the world both wrote me with this article on a specialty Sardinian cheese, casu marzu, (which was definitely not mentioned in that great cookbook by Effisio Harris I reviewed of Sardinian cuisine...), both amigos claiming "saw this and thought you'd be interested!"

I got my fill of fun cheese with "angel's feet" (Roquefort) in France and a host-father who, on my very first day in his home, lectured me at the dinner table while brandishing the cheese knife on the proper pronunciation of cancoillotte (much easier to eat than to say), before his wife swatted him and told him to have some pity on the poor American girl - though this moment in fact became a bonding ritual over French cheese that was to last the duration of my stay with them...

But as for associating me with eyeball-assailing larvae, even if it is from a beautiful Mediterranean isle, all I can say is: "thanks for the thought?"

Sit for a king?

While my husband continues to faire le tri chez nous, (i.e. downsizing our stuff*) I continue to faire du lèche vitrine (i.e. window-shop; or would it be leche écran if it happens to be online?) at 1st Dibs. You can find some awesome "stuff" on there. It's like shopping at the marché des puces without so much of the junk to weed through...

One of my recent favorites is this Nigerian "King's chair," entirely beaded and I think the words "colorful" or "vivid" don't even come close...

This goes with nothing I own. My husband would hate it. I love it. But could you actually sit on it?

I guess if he really hated it we could go for this cowrie-studded version from Alsadu Imports:

Or perhaps he'd be up for the set?

*See what comedian George Carlin has to say about stuff...

Book review: Indu Sundaresan's "In the Convent of Little Flowers"

When I first read Seattle-based author Indu Sundaresan's two-part saga of the green-eyed Indian empress Nur Jahan, I fell for her lush depictions of Mughal court life in all its splendor and intrigue. Through her tightly woven storytelling, you felt the heat of Rajasthan, the steam emanating from the curries and pastries issuing forth from court kitchens, and heard the rustle of the hem of a boldly colored ghagra sweeping over silken rose petals. The historical story of such a shrewd and beautiful woman, endowed with sharp intelligence and reputed to have designed a prototype of the Taj Mahal, appealed immensely to me.

Mughal painting of the enticing and shrewd Empress Nur Jahan

So when word got out that copies of her latest book, a collection of short stories entitled In the Convent of Little Flowers, was available for review by bloggers, I snapped it up. It was a pretty fast read, and mostly enjoyable; I think it's very difficult to make all the stories in a collection of short stories appealing to every reader. Finding an over-arching theme can be difficult for writers and editors and sometimes they can feel a bit forced. That wasn't the case with this ensemble, however.

Striking cover

Almost all of the stories take place in an instant - that is to say the tension of the narrative occurs in the moment between life and death, anger and compassion, social acceptance or following one's passion, and the protagonists are constantly swaying on the cusp of falling to one side or another. This is the primary element that makes most of the stories engaging.

The other intriguing element is that even when some of the stories appear to be just writers' exercises to stretch their narrative muscles, ("staying in shape" as it were,) these stories are actually culled from real events; whispers overheard, muffled cries of shock, as Sundaresan said "that such a thing could happen India," or overlooked articles clipped from the pages of the newspaper.

While some of the stories deal primarily with issues of immigration, of Indian identity, especially those caught between an east-west dichotomy and locale, the moments where Sundaresan's talents really shine are in the stories taking place in India. Here her writing hums with life and vibrancy, and the stories related to family, particular that of Meha and Chandar, "Three and a half seconds". This story of parental abuse and scorn struck me so deeply that I was literally brought to tears. That was the power of her writing with her two first published novels, The Twentieth Wife and The Feast of Roses. It is still present in some, though not all of these stories.

My least favorite story was that of an elite swinger's group; the story seemed more suited to the pages of a glossy magazine than literary writing. It wasn't bad by any means but I did find the treatment of the subject fairly staid; it was really an issue of coveting a woman once rejected, rather than jet set swingers. However, when you consider that this story was developed after simply overhearing a bit of gossip, it is interesting to ponder what Sundaresan's creative process was that brought her to this plot.

It's also pretty clear that Sundaresan writes for a very western audience, one that doesn't have much exposure to either Indian or Indian-American culture. While this is not a detraction, it is something I was aware of as I read through the collection of stories.

I would recommend this book to readers seeking insight into modern Indian culture, the "immigrant experience," or just enjoyable reading on subjects or a culture they might not know much about, or on which they may have many pre-conceived notions.

Indu Sundaresan

There is no doubt that Sundaresan possesses well-honed storytelling skills, endowed with the rich culture and traditions of India, her own experience living abroad, and inspired by history. I look forward to reading her future works. I hope for more novel-length books set in India, which so far seems to be her forte, or even a play, but I would read anything she publisher for the quality of her writing and expression and the sheer pleasure of reading her stories.

P.S. If you're in the Seattle area, Indu Sundaresan will be reading from her book next Monday, January 12, 7:30 p.m. at Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 South Main Street, Seattle, WA 98104. 206.624.6600. If I were closer I would go, but I would love to receive feedback from anyone who might attend.

P.P.S. Indu, please come do a reading at Powell's Books in Portland!