Arabian Nights by Lillian Chestney

The other day I read Arabian Nights by Lillian Chestney. It was pretty damn good! For starters, I found her comic adaption of the stories to be interesting and slightly different from the way I’ve heard the tales of Sinbad, Aladdin, and others princes of this epic.  Lillian’s version was easy to absorb, making the stories more accessible to a larger audience. I think this is important, especially for quintessential classics like 1,001 Arabian Nights.

I picked this title to read because it came out in 1943, which was right in the middle of World War II. Around this time it was clear that the Allies would eventually take Europe and I believe the bloodiest battles of the Pacific were about to start.

It’s interesting to see women like Lillian Chestney take over a job that was largely male dominated, especially adventure stories.

It’s interesting to see a woman’s perspective on these classic tales. Often times, I found that the princess and female heroes played a much more important role in her version then, say Richard Berton’s novel version of the tales.

I wonder if women like Lillian realized how important it was for them to succeed in what they were doing.  Cause if they didn’t prove that they were just as good as men—which at a time oozing with sexism—then they wouldn’t maintain their jobs after the war.

I mean, just look at the advertising of the time. IT’S BLATENTLY SEXEST. Like, not even in a funny way. But that was the pop cult belief at the time. That women were housemaids. Not artists, nor storytellers.

I recommend reading Arabian Nights and I definitely want to check out some of the other works by women that are available on the course webshare. What I’m pumped to read is Saga. We’ve been talking a lot about it in class and it looks fantastic.