Kawakami’s Sisters in Yellow dissects inherited poverty

The Story in Brief

Mieko Kawakami's novel 'Sisters in Yellow', translated by Lauren Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio, is set in late 1990s Japan. It follows 15-year-old Hana as she searches for a normal home and family while living with an absent mother. The book exposes how society abandons those born without money, leaving them with debt and precarity. Kawakami argues that poverty erodes the material conditions needed for belonging and intimacy. The novel, published by Picador at Rs 799, occasionally overstays its welcome but effectively uses recurring motifs to capture the circularity of deprivation.

Through characters like Kimiko and Momoko, Kawakami dismantles the sentimental idea that home is built on love alone. She shows that belonging requires an address, a bank account, and a stable job. The novel asks who gets to remain a child and finds that childhood itself is unequally distributed.