Question Memory Geisha

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Teacher’s notes LEVEL 6 PENGUIN READERS Teacher Support Programme Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden becomes a successful geisha, renowned for her beauty. Then one day she meets the man who had comforted her by the stream. But life does not run smoothly for Sayuri and there are powerful obstacles that prevent the two from coming together. Chapter 1: Born in Yoroido, a small fishing village, young Chiyo leaves her home when her mother falls ill. She becomes a maid to beautiful Hatsumomo in an okiya in Gion, a famous geisha area in Kyoto. Chapter 2: Chiyo meets Pumpkin, another young girl. They have to please cruel Hatsumomo, who makes her life miserable at the okiya. About the author Arthur Golden was born and brought up in Tennessee, in the southern United States. He graduated from Harvard in 1978 with a degree in art history, specializing in Japanese art. In 1980 he obtained a postgraduate qualification in Japanese History and also studied Mandarin Chinese. He then went to work for a magazine in Tokyo, where he met a young man whose father was a famous businessman and whose mother was a geisha. Golden was fascinated by this, and back in the United States, began a fictional novel about a young man whose mother was a geisha. However, realizing that his real interest was in the secretive geisha world, he resolved to write a novel about a geisha. He did an enormous amount of research and the novel took many years to write. He wrote three versions of the book before it was finally accepted by a New York publisher. The authenticity of the novel brought Golden much-deserved success. The author lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife and children. Chapter 3: Feeling useless, unhappy Chiyo cries by a stream. A gentleman speaks kind words to her, offers her a handkerchief, and praises her beautiful grey eyes. She falls in love with the Chairman.

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