Memoirs of a Geisha Review

Hi y'all, today I'm going to talk to you about Memoirs of a Geisha by author Golden. So this is another book I picked up from last year's annual library sale. Once a year my library, you know, gets rid of all the books they don't want anymore and paperbacks are 50 cents and it was a very good year. I really don't read as much non-fiction as I probably should or really as much as I want to. But one of my favorite ways of exploring an alien culture is through historical fiction and this is a wonderful example of that. Particularly when the historical fiction has a heavy element of romance it really helps me, you know, better understand sort of this alien environment that the book is describing. And this does have a heavy romantic subplot. It's a very twisted romantic subplot but it's there so that helps. The writing is beautiful and it gorgeously contrasts with the horrible narrative that is this story. Basically this is the story of an impoverished girl who her mother dies and her elderly father sells her and her sister into prostitution. Now the sister is pretty plain and she gets the short end of the stick when she gets just, you know, kicked over to the common whorehouse. These are the girls from Tanaka? Sisters, yes. From your idol. This one maybe. The other one no. But the protagonist Chiyo, she has a very striking and unique eye color and this gets her in the door to become a geisha. She gets the opportunity to spend many many years studying in order to become a geisha and the book through her eyes explores the culture, the Japanese culture that surrounds the geisha and what that means to be a geisha and what the ramifications of that are and how that is supported within the society. What I found really fascinating was essentially that this is like the highest class of prostitution that you can get essentially is the geisha. The way they're treated is they are highly respected as geisha within their society. They are exceptionally respected. The geisha themselves are, they are akin to goddesses basically. They're just the epitome of social everything but at the same time their individuality and their individual personhood is not respected at all. We do not become geisha to pursue our own destinies. I want a life that is mine! The geisha are somewhat expected to be interchangeable although there is a hierarchy of geisha as it were and they sort of figure that out on their own and It's a very interesting way that this whole little subculture figures itself out and figures out its own rules and one thing this book did wonderfully well is accurately portraying sort of the infighting and cattiness and the passive aggressive frenemy behavior that you get when you you know you get a whole bunch of women together and that happens. She was running away with her sister the whore. That was very well done. So it was a really interesting look at that and I know this book has had a lot of controversy because it was written by an American who had done a lot of research into Japanese culture and the main points were that he over-emphasized some things or under-emphasized other things and it wasn't the most accurate portrayal of Japanese culture but that's fine you know as long as you know that going in it's still very interesting and I still feel like I learned a lot and have a better understanding because I am an American so getting an American's perspective probably you know is a good way to at least start dipping my toe in there but for sure this was a five-star read for me. I completely understand why it blew up and it got so popular. So happy my library had this for 50 cents. This is great. So that's all from me today. Have you read Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden and if not are you interested in reading it now? What are your thoughts? Talk to me in the comments. I'd love to hear from you and until then bye-bye. And what that means to be a geisha...