![]() ![]() Craig Thompson has placed his nearly 700-page graphic novel, Habibi, squarely in this tradition. As an artistic tradition, Orientalism encompasses many beautiful works it's impossible to imagine Western culture without-Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," the "Arabian Coffee" dance in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, George Harrison playing the sitar. This longing has a name, Orientalism, the Westerner's longing for an imagined, exotic Eastern realm. I longed to inhabit that world, even a little bit. But I was also entranced by the magical world of the tales, the realm of jinn, caliphs, and hookahs. The sexy parts that I read (and re-read) made me consider it a candidate for the youth group bonfire. ![]() At a bookstore, I picked up an unexpurgated selection that could have earned its own parental advisory label. The book that often came to my mind, however, was my well-thumbed paperback of Tales from 1,001 Nights.Īt 12, I had become fascinated with the Disney movie Aladdin and wanted to read the original source. Perhaps they had in mind porn or parental-advisory-labeled CDs. When I was a teenager, youth group leaders would occasionally suggest we throw out-or even burn-any materials in our possession that weren't glorifying to God. ![]()
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