Showing posts with label identity. Show all posts

by: Jodi Picoult
ISBN: 9780743454537
List Price: $16.00

Anna is only thirteen and yet she already bears the burden of an age upon her shoulders. She's been through numerous surgeries, procedures, hospitals, and doctor's offices, yet Anna is not sick. She was born to be a genetic match for her sister, Kate, who has leukemia. She offers precisely matched blood and bone marrow to her sister in hopes of keeping her well enough to fight the cancer. Anna has performed her duties lovingly for her sister, until this point in time.

Anna is now a teenager and is starting down the path of self-discovery. Yet, how can she ever truly define herself when she is always thought of in relation to her sister. Without Kate, there would not have been an Anna, yet without Anna, there would no longer be a Kate. Anna knows that her actions, whatever they may be, directly affect her sister's livelihood, but she yearns for some meaning in her life that belongs to her.

So, to save her identity from being forever lost in the operating room, Anna does the only thing that she knows to do; demand rights to her own body. She obtains a lawyer by the name of Campbell Alexander to defend her in the lawsuit that she files against her parents. Anna hopes to stop her parents from forcing her to aide Kate and she hopes that Campbell will be the one who can help. Little does she know that he may be the one who needs the real help.

My Thoughts

This book is moving, to say the very least. With so many facets of human emotion displayed so openly in the book, it's hard not to be immediately drawn into the situation. At times, it almost seems as if Kate and Anna are your own sisters or daughters.

On one hand, I side with Anna. It was not fair of her parents to conceive her only to be a body part replacement factory for her sister. She is an individual person who deserves just as much respect and love as her parents afford to her sister. A person, even a young teenager has the right to choose what to do to their body.

But this story is so much more than that; it's about a family torn apart by the strains of illness, a girl whose decisions may cause her sister to lose her life, and above all, the bond that connects sisters together despite what occurs between them.

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Penned by: Arthur Golden
ISBN: 9780679781585
List Price: $14.95

This is the story of little Chiyo, the daughter of a fisherman from Yoroido, Japan. When her mother falls ill, her father sells Chiyo and her sister, Satsu to men from urban Japan. The girls arrive in Kyoto, they are separated; Satsu is sold into prostitution and Chiyo is adopted by a Geisha house as a servant. Hatsumomo, the house's lead geisha, is jealous of Chiyo and constantly torments and belittles her. When young Chiyo becomes depressed with her life, a man called the Chairman, has pity on her and buys her something sweet to eat. Chiyo has never experienced such kindness and is immediately taken by the Chairman's charity. She vows that everything she does will be to bring herself closer to him.

The novel follows Chiyo as she grows into a young woman and becomes a geisha under the instruction of legendary geisha, Mameha. Chiyo takes the name Sayuri for her geisha pseudonym and quickly rises to becoming the most sought after geisha in all of Kyoto. Although she performs for many men, Sayuri only truly desires the affections of the Chairman, whom she has taken great lengths to be near.

Follow the struggles of young Chiyo, a simple fisherman's daughter, as she loses her identity and becomes the illustrious Sayuri, the most desired geisha of all time.

My Thoughts

The most interesting contrast in this book is the role of a prostitute versus that of a geisha. This distinction is one that eludes many foreign minds, especially those who choose not to see the beauty in what a geisha is; an artist.

One does not choose to become a geisha, but has that way of life thrust upon them out of necessity. A geisha is unable to allow herself to love one man or even any men at all. A geisha must devote herself solely to the illusion that she is a seductress and an artist rolled into one. A geisha is an object of desire amongst men, so much so that the presence of a geisha is desired by the wealthiest and most powerful of men.

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