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    A Study Guide for Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha"
    A Study Guide for Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha"
    A Study Guide for Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha"
    Ebook38 pages32 minutes

    A Study Guide for Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535828475
    A Study Guide for Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha" - Gale

      1

      Memoirs of a Geisha

      Arthur Golden

      1997

      Introduction

      Memoirs of a Geisha is full of surprises, especially to Western readers unfamiliar with the mysterious Japanese geisha. Perhaps the biggest surprise, however, is the novel's author, an American man from Tennessee. Arthur Golden's fascination with Asian culture was sparked years before he began writing Memoirs of a Geisha, as he holds degrees in Japanese history and art history with a specialization in Japanese art. It was while learning and working abroad that he met Mineko Iwasaki, a retired geisha who agreed to numerous interviews with Golden in preparation for his novel. Iwasaki provided critical inside information that gives the novel both integrity and intrigue.

      The rags-to-riches story of Sayuri, the novel's heroine, is a first-person account, as if she is relating her life story to an American professor. The novel addresses themes such as freedom, beauty, metamorphosis, and gender relationships. Upon publication in 1997, Memoirs of a Geisha quickly became a bestseller, an impressive showing for a first-time author. Memoirs of a Geisha has been translated into more than twenty languages and has sold more than four million copies in English. Critics and readers alike have embraced the novel, and in the first few years after publication, it was a popular book club selection.

      Author Biography

      Memoirs of a Geisha, published in 1997, is Arthur Golden's debut novel. The bestselling novel was a long time in the making; Golden spent more than ten years on the novel, throwing out the first two drafts before finding his voice in the first-person account that was a publishing success.

      Golden was born in 1957 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to a family of journalists. His parents, Ben and Ruth, published the Chattanooga Times, and in the early 2000s his cousin, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, published the New York Times. Golden's parents divorced when he was eight, and his father died five years later. Golden relates this to his challenges with the Chairman's character as Sayuri's love interest. Because his father was absent for much of his childhood, Golden struggled to make the character and the relationship believable. Golden attended Harvard College (the school of fine arts at Harvard University), where he earned a degree in art history with a specialty in Japanese art. He then completed a master's degree in Japanese history (he

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