Memoirs of a Geisha

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It's a hit!

this book touched my heart, it gave me hope that (*spoiler alert*) life can work out

 

 

by Amanda Mayer

No, it's a flop!

Pretty nice story, but should be read only as such; it's a work of fiction, or to be less judicious, fabricated history. Most books don't force on... (show more)

Pretty nice story, but should be read only as such; it's a work of fiction, or to be less judicious, fabricated history. Most books don't force one of the sources to sue the author for breach of contract and slander for portraying an entire profession and culture as prostitutes. This one did.

I read this book expecting to hate it, being as it is an account of Taisho Era Japan about the lives of Japanese women in an insular, secretive society written in English by a white American guy in the present (which spawned a movie starring Chinese actresses speaking [poor] English) - but I didn't hate it. It just irritated me, because I know the net effect will be more hardening of the idea that "geisha=prostitute" in the popular consciousness, which leads inevitably to the fetishism of "Japanese woman=prostitute". I'm sick enough already of this tripe, which is just a carryover from American GIs who spent time in Japan during the Occupation mistaking their ordinary prostitutes (and often women forced into prostitution through starvation) for geisha. They weren't prostitutes any more than they are called "GEESHA GIRLS". (show less)

 

 

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  This book has made its way in to my heart and permanently into my mind. I have read my copy so many times that the book no longer stays shut. I cry and laugh and rejoice each time I read it.

   

   

  by Jessica Carver-Skinner on Apr 01, 2008 at 04:30PM

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  I was drawn in by the writing style, but was disappointed with the lack of depth in character development and creativity in plot (chick flick in disguise,) given the intricate history already given to him. Still, I extracted some nice quotes,

  "Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one." p344

  "Adversity is like a strong wind... it holds us back from places we might otherwise go (and) it tears... (show more)

  I was drawn in by the writing style, but was disappointed with the lack of depth in character development and creativity in plot (chick flick in disguise,) given the intricate history already given to him. Still, I extracted some nice quotes,

  "Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one." p344

  "Adversity is like a strong wind... it holds us back from places we might otherwise go (and) it tears away from us all but things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as might like to be." p405

  "How strange... that the same woman who looked me so frankly in the eye as a girl, many years ago, can't bring herself to do it now." p485

  "How curious it is, what the future brings us. You must take care... never to expect too much." p409

  "Sometimes... I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see." p497

  It reminded me of Raise the Red Lantern, a film about a young Chinese girl who becomes one of four wives/concubines in a wealthy man's household. I don't like reading about these young girls who, though clever, have naive hopes of love/romance/friendship/security only to find (at some point) that her life/future is at the mercy of either men who regard her as little more than an object of beauty and pleasure (plaything) or women who regard her with competition instead of sisterhood.

  Some may say that personifying beauty and pleasure (and having such influence) is a respectable/desirable position and it may well be, but I think that power is only an illusion, as the beholder can take his affections away as his attention span pleases. I don't know that it is a feminist or humanist issue - these characters are desperate for love/security and naively think they will attain it from their focus of desire (desperation?). Maybe men and women's ideas of love differ? Maybe it is an individualistic thing? Is the bottom line that desiring a relationship places the source of their happiness external to themselves? Though these films were set some decades ago, isn't it the same now? Aren't we still the same creatures? (show less)

   

   

  by Facebook User on Aug 23, 2009 at 03:22PM

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