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Lady's Reviews > Geisha, a Life

Geisha, a Life by Mineko Iwasaki
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it was ok
bookshelves: true-stories, memiors

I'd give this 2.5 if I could but it doesn't deserve a three. The author is stuck up, spoiled and full of herself. She Disparages both the Queen of England and Prince Charles for trivial things that a normal person would never even consider. She acts like shes better than everyone around her and bosses people around from a young age. She spends the entire book slamming the entire geisha system and is terribly offended that everyone doesn't change and do her things her way instead. If you're reading this because this is the woman that memiors of a geisha is based off of I wouldn't bother, Very little of her life was directly used in the book and most that was has been changed around so you may not catch it anyway. Mineko is nothing like Sayuri in any way. I spent most of this book being kind of disgusted at her holier than thou attitude. At one point when shes a child she takes off her shoe and expects another little girl to scratch her toe for her!!
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Reading Progress

June 27, 2011 – Shelved
Started Reading
June 29, 2011 – Finished Reading
September 20, 2011 – Shelved as: true-stories
September 23, 2011 – Shelved as: memiors

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Comments Showing 1-2 of 2 (2 new)

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message 1: by Cleodel (new) - rated it 3 stars
Mar 24, 2014 04:50AM

Cleodel Memoirs of a Geisha is incredibly problematic. It is written by a White, male, American who completely took liberties with this enclosed society to make a book that relies heavily on oversexualization. He made millions off of his book which heavily relied in information given by Mineko about her life. She actually sued him because he revealed his source and they settled out of court.

Mineko is not like Sayuri because she is an actual living human being. And as any human being, she is bound to have faults and in this case it is the fact that she is boastful (although what Prince Charles did was pretty rude and self-absorbed as well. She used that fan for dancing. So it was a practical item that was worth a lot of money. It's like if he came up to you and signed his name on your laptop screen.)


message 2: by Raiveran (new) - rated it 4 stars
Feb 25, 2015 05:21AM

Raiveran Rabbit The thing is, nothing about her upbringing made her "a normal person". I wouldn't expect her to think, reason and react like a regular person, and I sure wouldn't be reading her story if she were.


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