Choices Choices Choices

I am trying to decide on a book to teach in my English II course, and it has been difficult. With the world of books open to me, choosing just one is like deciding between organs: Would I prefer the nice doctor take my heart or my lungs? After much thought - difficulty of text, ability of text to teach cultural diversity, length of text, etc. - I have narrowed the world down to two books I feel are both good choices.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Set in post-Civil War America, Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie Crawford, an African-American woman who left her first husband to follow husband number 2 to Eaton, Florida, the first all-black town. She eventually marries husband number 3. While the story is focused on Janie, it also is the story of a black community, of black tradition and life. Hurston wrote at the height of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s, and at the time, the book was highly criticized for her use of dialect and for not writing an enraged look at black experience in a white world.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
In Memoirs of a Geisha, an orphaned girl, Sayuri, who through long, hard training in the arts of music, dance, make-up, clothing, conversation, and seduction eventually sells her virginity for a record price and then becomes the mistress of a wealthy man. The story reveals the choices a woman must make in patriarchal societies about her body and her livelihood when the choices are direct prostitution or subtle seduction and manipulation. Golden wrote the novel after extensive study into and training within the geisha culture and he received much of his information from a real life geisha named Mineko Iwasaki.

So, which book do you think is most beneficial for students to read? Post Civil War America or Japan? African-American culture or Japanese culture?