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A Novel
by Mieko Kawakami
Book Reviewed by:From Mieko Kawakami, award-winning author of Breasts and Eggs, comes a bold novel of sacrifice and the tumultuous bonds of sisterhood, set in the gritty Tokyo of the 1990s.
Hana has nothing – she's fifteen years old and living in a tiny apartment in a suburb of Tokyo with her young mother, a hostess at a local dive bar. They have no money, no security. Then Kimiko appears.
Kimiko is older, a bright light in Hana's dark world. Together they set up Lemon, a bar that, despite its shabby setting and seedy clientele, becomes a haven for Hana. Suddenly Hana has a job she loves, friends to share her days with, and the glittering promise of money. She feels like a normal girl. She feels invincible.
But in the narrow alleys of Sangenjaya, nothing is as it seems. Soon all of Hana's hope, her optimism, and her drive will be pushed to the limit ...
A story of enduring friendship and deep betrayal, Sisters in Yellow is a masterpiece of teenage dreams and adult cruelties that confirms Mieko Kawakami as one of the great writers of her generation.
PREMONITION
1.
I first met Ran Kato out on the street.
Whenever I went outside to see a customer off or to go home after closing up the bar for the night, there was always a group of girls by the main drag, handing out fliers and pulling in customers. Ran was one of those girls.
She was petite and always wore the same pair of rhinestone-studded hot pink platform sandals. Her hair was bleached, almost blonde, and she had a narrow forehead. Her eyebrows were plucked thin, and her makeup stood out, too, her eyes accentuated in a dusting of white shimmer.
"Hi there," Ran said to me one night in early December. "Cold, isn't it? I've seen you around."
"Hi. Is it just you out here today?"
Kimiko had asked me to go to the drugstore to pick up a bottled energy shot. It was around nine.
"Yeah, all the other girls have customers. Except for me." Ran was wearing an oversized white bomber jacket and a strappy black dress that hugged her body. "It's kind of dead around here today, don't you think?" she ...
Sisters in Yellow was written after the #MeToo movement gripped the world. Mieko Kawakami, celebrated in Japan, was fascinated with gender solidarity and survivorship. "I wanted to highlight solidarity's underlying problems with the same intensity that I believed in its goodness." Theoretically, solidarity is complex. It depends on inclusion but also nurtures exclusion. The inherent conflict is personal freedom at the cost of group obligation. And, as has been noted in feminist literature for five decades, sisters will find a way to trash sisters. Transiency is a strong sub-theme that adds depth, the idea that nothing is permanent in an impoverished world. I was hoping for a different Hana, one who slays her poverty, even though I know that in real life poor women in desperate circumstances remain poor women in their desperate circumstances. I credit the novel's translators (Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio) for mining emotional impact while keeping the story a Japanese one, with villains both male and female, sentimental figures representing multiple generations...continued
Full Review
(1188 words)
(Reviewed by Valerie Morales).
In the United States, the "model minority" is a stereotype linked to Asian immigrants and diaspora. The myth speaks to a commitment to academic excellence while simultaneously diminishing experiences of discrimination. The stereotype and those who believe in it cherry-pick a racial group seen as embracing assimilation and pit them against other groups who consistently speak of white privilege and racism. Like all stereotypes, it is based on fallacious reasoning, and like all stereotypes, it sticks.
I found myself surprised when I read that Japan has a school dropout problem. Subconsciously, the model minority myth landed. But in the 2024 school year, a staggering number of Japanese students at the elementary and junior high school ...
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