Helpful Score: 1
Interesting, and quite different from "Memoirs of a Geisha". No happy endings here. The story of a geisha who was dirt poor and not in the glamorous life of the aforementioned novel. This is a true autobiography. Gritty, informative, sad.
Helpful Score: 1
Not just a good book, but an important one.
Sayo Masuda's memoir gives an unembellished, unromanticized view of what it was really like to live and work as a geisha. It's a story of extreme poverty and oppression, but her resilience, spirit and humor shine through. It feels to me as though translator Rowley truly captured her authentic voice - the tale seems honest and sincere. The author never flinches from telling the bad along with the good, and the result is a story which truly shows the universality of humanity at our best and worst, regardless of time period or culture.
Sayo Masuda's memoir gives an unembellished, unromanticized view of what it was really like to live and work as a geisha. It's a story of extreme poverty and oppression, but her resilience, spirit and humor shine through. It feels to me as though translator Rowley truly captured her authentic voice - the tale seems honest and sincere. The author never flinches from telling the bad along with the good, and the result is a story which truly shows the universality of humanity at our best and worst, regardless of time period or culture.
