How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream, 1790–1935 (review)

Since 2001, images of people from West and South Asia have become increasingly prominent in entertainment, advertising, and journalism in the United States. This trend did not begin with the so-called "War on Terror," however. In fact, historian Susan Nance claims that Americans have always shown a fascination with the people, customs, and legends of "the East." Throughout the first 150 years of American history, the American public sought out cultural engagement with the Eastern world, as Eastern stories and performances were prominent in a rapidly developing capitalist economy. And it is this fanciful world to which Nance transports readers in her book, How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream, 1790–1935.

A historian with an interest in intercultural communication, Nance has written a hefty work filled with interesting and insightful examples that scholars from multiple fields will find useful. For example, the book makes an important scholarly contribution when Nance dares to take on the intellectual moment of today, which she claims uses "[o]rientalism to simply define American contact with a particular portion of the globe" (7). Nance prefers to investigate the historical evidence of the relationship between the two regions and, as such, invites scholars to reconsider their approach. She presents scholarship that views Americans as something other than an "unthinkingly racist mass public" through a book that provides readers a glimpse into how Eastern performances of leisure, abundance, and contentment influenced and defined the American dream rather than merely serving as an opportunity for Americans to demonize an ethnic region (4).

Nance begins her analysis with the text in which she claims Americans first accessed the Eastern world's model of democratic capitalism: One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights. The chapter provides ample justification that the characteristics in Nights brought to life the acquisitive, luxurious, hedonistic ideals of the American public in the years 1790 to 1892. By showing how the Nights became useful to Americans, she exposes the myth that Western appropriations of the story were crude interpretations. Indeed, the chapter showcases many instances of Eastern culture being used metaphorically within early American culture to signify things deemed beautiful, creative, and celebratory of democratic capitalism rather than being used to represent racist generalizations about Eastern "others."

In chapters 2 and 3, Nance provides analysis of specific U.S. men performing Eastern characteristics through analyses of American performers, Christopher Oscanyan and Bayard Taylor, as well as individual groups of men in fraternal orders such as the Freemasons and Shriners. Again and again, Nance points to examples that the men did not play Eastern or Muslim to demonize the "other" but instead to make a living debunking the common misunderstandings of Muslim and Eastern culture. Both chapters provide compelling stories of men portraying the culture as spiritually rich and luxuriously prosperous. As a result, Oscanyan was seen as engaging, credible, and polite as he was performing a version of Ottoman manhood. Likewise, the Shriners were able, because of their performances of Eastern mysticism, to "build their fortunes" and make their group one of elite membership (99). Nance argues that the performances cemented cultural relations among like-minded men eager to show their wealth and support for capitalist ideals.

By exploring how American people from all walks of life began replicating Eastern culture, chapters 4 and 5 examine how the Eastern world could be both exotic and familiar to the American public. The opportunity for foreign-born performers and native-born Americans to interact allowed for hybrid identities of the performers to surface. For example, athletic dancers and acrobats would perform with an Ottoman flag in one hand and an American flag in the other as a way to promote themselves to patriotic Americans and immigrants new to the country. Both chapters remind readers that the practice of "playing Eastern" was profitable for both Americans and foreign-born performers alike as long as they played the...