I didn’t want to put a bunch of affiliate links in yesterday’s post about Cultural Appreciation for Fusion Dancers, as I thought it might detract a bit from the message if I went off on a long tangent about specific books. Plus I didn’t want to sully the message with commerce. However, I figured it might be alright to do a follow-up post with links to some of the books that I’ve read and found useful or interesting in my journey to better understand the roots of my dance.
FTC disclaimer: These are affiliate links! If you make a purchase from Amazon after following one of my links, I get a small kickback. I’d really appreciate it if you did make some purchases from my affiliate links, but I’m also cool with you purchasing these books from elsewhere, especially if you opt to support a local book store or buy directly from the author instead. Ready? On to the recommendations!
“A Trade like Any Other.” Look, I’m going to play it straight with you. This book might make you a little angry or sad. It looks into how female dancers and singers are treated in Egypt, and it’s not pretty. After reading this book I really couldn’t understand why so many Western belly dancers wanted to go to Egypt to perform. Still, this is really important information to have. You’ll learn a lot about the different classes of belly dancers in Egypt, the history of the dance, and the daily lives of dancers and musicians. This book is available as a paperback and an ebook.
Paradise Beneath Her Feet. If you’d like an injection of hope after reading “A Trade like Any Other” this is a really interesting examination of feminism in the Middle East. I found it really enlightening, as someone who didn’t know much about the Islamic faith, to learn about feminist interpretations of it, and of the difficulty of establishing secular feminism in heavily religious areas. A lot of the information in this book is already out of date, so it’s better to look at it as a bit of a history primer and a snapshot of what was going on in the Middle East at the time of publication. This book is not really about belly dance at all, but I think it’s a good read for better understanding the cultures belly dance developed in. Available in paperback, hardcover and ebook.
The Belly Dance Reader is a good option if you don’t really feel like you have the time or energy to devote to reading an entire book on a single subject. There’s a lot of really informative essays about a variety of topics, and many of them are easy to read in a single sitting. They’re not all about the history of belly dance or Middle Eastern culture, but there’s enough good information to make it worth the purchase. There’s also a second volume but I have not read it yet so I can’t speak to how much history/culture there is available in it. Unfortunately this book is only available in paperback and it’s a big paperback, so it’s not super-portable. But it’s definitely a good addition to your belly dance library.
Looking for Little Egypt discusses the early roots of belly dance in North America by trying to track down whether Little Egypt actually performed at the Chicago World’s Fair. It’s pretty entertaining and informative, although I’ve seen some people question whether Sol Bloom actually had as much involvement in bringing belly dance to the Fair as this book claims he did (the book relies on letters and other accounts, taking Sol at his word, but he may have been a notorious exaggerator, so make of it what you will). This is another one that is only available as a large physical paperback, but again, it’s worth having in your library.
Serpent of the Nile is not my favorite book because it does rely on some fauxlore/wishful thinking when talking about the history of belly dance. However it is a very beautiful book which gives a general overview of the history of belly dance. I think it’s worth reading, but don’t accept everything within these pages as fact. This is another one that is only available as a physical book, but given the amount of beautiful Orientalist paintings (yes yes I know the Orientalist movement was deeply flawed but I still love the textiles in a lot of the paintings) you’ll probably prefer to be reading it on glossy paper instead of a small screen.
The Tribal Bible. After the drama of Tribal Fest imploding, Kajira is not my favorite person in the world right now. BUT this is still an awesome book, exploring the early roots of tribal and fusion belly dance in North America. I really enjoyed this because the original edition was written while tribal was still really young and it was interesting to see some of the things people were doing then which have already fallen out of favor. There’s also some great sections on jewelry and textiles, and why we shouldn’t call what we do “g*psy dance.” I recommend getting the digital edition unless you have a lot of cash to shell out for the out-of-print physical book.
Obviously this is not an exhaustive list. There are a lot of other books that are supposed to be very good that I have just not had a chance to read yet (although I do own a lot of them). I only wanted to recommend books that I could offer an informed opinion on. I also only wanted to talk about books that I felt were relevant to the issues of cultural appreciation and the roots of belly dance, so I left out novels or memoirs by modern belly dancers. If you have some books you’d like to recommend, please share them in the comments section!