Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami
Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor and
NetGalley for sharing an advanced copy of Mieko Kawakami’s latest book Sisters in Yellow, with skilled translation from Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio. I’ve
previously read Breasts and Eggs, Heaven, and All the Lovers in the
Night, and I’ve found her books to be both challenging and rewarding.
Kawakami’s books tackle difficult situations, usually faced by women, and in
many of these books, the characters are women who are not afforded the kinds of
voices or platforms in society where most will listen to them. Sisters in
Yellow follows that standard in telling the story of Hana Ito, a young woman
whose mother works in a bar as a hostess and who acts as more of a sister than
a mother. It’s through Hana’s mother, Ai, that Hana eventually meets Kimiko, a
woman Ai’s age who ends up living with Hana while she is in early adolescence
for a brief time, but shows some care and consideration for Hana that leaves an
indelible imprint on her. It’s this connection that eventually leads Hana to
leave home and live with Kimiko, eventually opening their own place, Lemon,
whose color holds an auspicious future for the duo. It’s through Lemon that
Hana befriends two other young women, Ran and Momoko, who eventually become a
part of the Lemon family, and once Lemon experiences a tragedy, the quartet
moves into a new home looking for new opportunities to make money through
various hustles and underworld connections.
I loved the character of Hana, especially through the first
half of the book. As many of the other characters mention, Hana’s strong and
focused, and she’s capable and competent, despite having no real practice or
training from her mother, whose neglectful indifference led Hana to make sense
of the world on her own terms. Nevertheless, this lack of feedback or guidance
also ends up harming Hana, leaving her often wracked with self-doubt and a
slight sense of paranoia and anxiety. This is some of Kawakami’s strongest and
most affecting writing in the book. At times when Hana doesn’t immediately hear
back from a colleague or when she receives an unexpected response from a
friend, Hana’s anxiety plunges her into the depths of despair, and as a reader,
I was on that descent with her, feeling the kind of doubt and desperation I
rarely seek out, but nevertheless sometimes experience. These are harrowing
passages that take me back to the joys and depths of young adulthood,
especially when there’s so much uncertainty and precariousness. Nevertheless,
there’s some joy as we see Hana and Kimiko eke out a joyous, if not
hard-wrought, existence on their own terms with their bar, Lemon. Through this
experience, Hana gets some insight into the world of her mother, a world of bar
hostesses, mistresses, and women on the edge of society, looking pretty, but ultimately
given few rights and privileges. This is also one of the more powerful aspects
of the book, where we gain insight into the world of women who often operate on
the peripheries with minimal voice. These are women who live in the night and
shadows, and yet Hana seems to be different from the prettier, made-up faces
like Ran and Kotomi, motivated to make a life and seek out opportunities, not
just scrape out her survival. And yet, while Hana is mostly a well developed
and powerful character who we root for, her housemates, Ran and Momoko, become
hangers-on who rarely do much beyond find trouble or money problems. Similarly,
Hana’s mother also gets herself into a bad debt that Hana has to help out with,
in one of the more heartbreaking parts of the book. I not only felt bad for
Hana, and wondered why she would give up so much for her mom who never really
gave up much for her, but also wondered how Ai (Hana’s mom) got into this
situation. Momoko also gets into a similar debt situation, which is also
incredibly frustrating, and left me wondering why exactly Hana decided to pay
off Momoko’s debt. While these events demonstrated Hana’s willingness to help
(or at least avoid further scrutiny), it also showed how easily this society
can prey on women who are desperate to make a living with little education and
fewer options for well-paying work.
I wasn’t expecting this to be a kind of crime thriller- Hana
eventually ends up involved in bank and credit card scams, working for another
woman, Viv, who might see some of herself in Hana. Although Hana takes the
initiative to find work through Viv, she also demonstrates her naivete in her
questions and fears of the police regarding these scams. Kawakami creates
strong tension through Hana’s will to find work by any means possible and her fear
of getting caught, while she continues to rope in the others in her orbit. Yet,
the last 15% of the book was not as enjoyable as the earlier parts. This book
is strongest when the women are bonding and supporting one another, whether it
is Hana’s financial and strategic support, or the kind of emotional and caring
support that ladies like Kimiko or Ran provide. As the story careened towards
the end and the women’s relationships begin to fray under the pressure of their
schemes, I found their actions and treatment of one another not as compelling as
the earlier part of the book. There are also some coincidental events that
arise that seemed to demonstrate Hana’s weaknesses. I won’t spoil the endings,
but it was a bit of a letdown, especially since the book starts out in the
present with Hana discovering that Kimiko, now in her 60s, has been arrested
for imprisoning and abusing a younger woman. The majority of the book is then
spent recounting how Hana met and came to live with Kimiko and the other women
(Ran and Momoko). If anything, it’s led me to question whether Kimiko really
cared for Hana, or if there was something else at play, and whether Hana, as an
adolescent, was seemingly manipulated by Kimiko. Even though the ending was
frustrating and somewhat underwhelming, Kawakami’s portrayal of the relationships
between the women of Lemon left me with more questions at the end, wondering
about the true nature of their relationships. Sisters in Yellow is a
powerful book, that slows towards the end, but makes readers question the
nature of memories and personal history, wondering really how wonderful those
days of uncertainty and precarity are in young adulthood. I recommend this book
especially if you are familiar with Kawakami’s other books where she frequently
writes about women on the fringes of society who are facing difficult and
challenging situations.
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