Welcome back to Sophia’s Shelf, where I review books on dance, creativity, and more. This month’s subject is The Divine Unrest by Leyla Najma.

I was really looking forward to reading this book. I mean, it sounded like a nice memoir, and the reviews on Amazon are glowing, all 5 stars except for one 4 star review. I have to wonder if those reviewers read the same book I did, because I gave it one star on Goodreads and the only reason why I forced myself to finish it is because I was reading it for a book club… that I was hosting!

The first thing that stood out to me was that this book really, truly, desperately needs a good copy editor to go over it with a red pen. The author constantly uses “apart” when she means “a part”, refers to something as a “mute point”, says that something “donned on her” and more language errors. Additionally, I found that her thoughts sometimes jumped around, or else meandered without any real focus. The narration could really use some tightening.

Of course, I write for a hobby and for a living, so I’m sensitive to these things. Maybe other readers wouldn’t mind as much, I know a lot of people are able to forgive grammatical errors, or enjoy a stream-of-consciousness style of writing. And if that was the only problem with the book, I probably would have considered it a worthy effort and given it three stars.

But then there were issues that started to crop up in the content. I noticed that despite how much she claimed to enjoy teaching belly dance and helping women come into her own, all of her stories about her students were negative, along the lines of “This student was really dedicated and she did a good job but then she got a big head!” There was no sense of pride in the accomplishments of her students, no bragging about who had gone on to become a teacher in their own right, or otherwise succeed in dance.

You know those articles that go around every now and then about how to tell if you have a toxic dance teacher? I think some of those stories might be about her! How terrible to have a teacher who would, rather than giving you realistic ideas about your own abilities, let you get a swelled head than talk crap about you in a book. A good teacher knows how to manage student expectations and provide them with performance opportunities appropriate to their skill and experience. Sure, that doesn’t guarantee that you won’t get the occasional dancer who decides she’s amazing after six weeks of classes and sets off to steal all your gigs and start her own classes… but that should be the exception, not the norm.

As an example, she discusses the time she decided it would be a good idea to have her students do a photo shoot with a photographer friend of hers. This IS a good idea! It’s fun to get dressed up and do photos, and it gives the teacher more material to promote her classes and student performances. She then proceeds to complain about how her students posed poorly, one kept blocking the author’s face with her hand, and they looked strained and uncomfortable in the photos… Well of course they did! The narration gives no indication that she spent any time preparing them for the photo shoot, she just expected that they would naturally be able to follow the photog’s instructions and pose beautifully, without any practice or coaching from their teacher.

Oh, and despite mentioning throughout the book that she considers herself a proponent of “traditional” belly dance, she goes on to describe the theme of the shoot. Inspired by her collection of Kachina dolls (click link if you’re not familiar with these), she decided that they should do Native American inspired bold face makeup… and feathers… and corsets… and “g*psy” skirts. So tribal and fusion are not cool, but a random mish mash of cultural appropriation and corsets is great?

That’s not the only misstep she makes, either. She talks about how she danced barefoot in restaurants for a long time, glorying in gross-out stories of dirty floors and stepping on food, only to finally decide she should wear shoes after dislocating her toe during a performance! Look, I love to dance barefoot, but I always wear shoes when dancing in a restaurant or bar. Not only is it safer and more hygienic for me, but in Arizona at least it is the LAW. If a health inspector comes in and finds you dancing barefoot in a restaurant, your venue can get in big trouble, and you know they’re not going to want to invite you back after they pay that fine.

The more I read this book, the more I felt like the author had some deeply internalized misogyny to deal with, which is a really sad thing to see in a dancer. In addition to tearing down her own students, almost every story about a “dance friend” ended with the friend backstabbing her in some way. Despite urging a more cooperative atmosphere in the belly dance world, it feels like she’s bought into the idea that women only compete with each other. She’s also bought into the idea that we’re moody and emotional. She literally said something along the lines of “As women our moods can change from day to day like a yo-yo” and I wanted to shout “YOU MEAN AS HUMAN BEINGS.” Anyone can have a different mood from day to day. I mean, I’m married to a man and I have a brother and a father and male friends. I see how, like me, a bad day at work or not enough sleep or skipping breakfast or getting bad news or getting stuck in traffic can cause them to get really cranky. I’ve also seen how getting a good annual review or a surprise bonus or some kind words or a good meal or taking a day off from work or finally finishing a project they’re proud of can make them relentlessly happy. It’s called being human. It has nothing to do with gender and as women, we do ourselves a huge disservice when we further stereotypes that portray us as moody and catty.

I can’t really recommend that anyone reads this book, but maybe you give more stock to the reviews on Amazon than to my opinion. Maybe you want to see for yourself! Well, if you’re a Prime member you can read it for free if you have a Kindle, Fire Tablet or Fire phone. I had to pay for it since I use a Kindle app on an Android tablet, so you can go that route or buy yourself a physical copy if you prefer to go old school. Either way if you use the below link and buy the book or anything else on Amazon I will get a small kickback as part of the Amazon Affiliate program.