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Title: A book of exoticism
Review: I cannot deny that "Memoirs of a Geisha" is very entertaining story. But to me, a reader having studied Chinese and Oriental culture for more than 20 years, this story is uninteresting, entirely written in a man's point of view. Throughout the book, it is obvious that the author is trying hard to convince the reader that the narrator "is" an oriental woman, i.e. the geisha herself. But he fails after all. And the result is, the story is full of stereotypes, especially stereotypes of Asian women (e.g. good girls and bad girls, rivalry between women...), Asian men (e.g. how they victimize women) and patriarchal culture. In short, it disguises itself as a history of Asia women's struggle (purely in the eyes of the West), full of out-dated symbols, cliche and exoticism, which only appeals to the readers in the West who are not similar with the Orient.
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