Tag Archives: Laurel Taylor
When Life Gives You Lemons: Mieko Kawakami’s “Sisters in Yellow,” translated from Japanese by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio
Mieko Kawakami’s latest novel, “Sisters in Yellow,” is loosely framed by the COVID-19 pandemic, though the main story unfolds in the 1990s, after the economic “bubble” bursts and recession sets in, emphasizing the intersection between gender and precarity. Kawakami’s novel is as personal as it is political and, I would suggest, could be read as a call for a feminist ethics of care: an approach to care as interdependent, relational, contextual and intersectional.
Dream as Memory Itself: Tatsuhiko Shibusawa’s “Takaoka’s Travels,” Translated from Japanese by David Boyd
Very few historical fiction writers would think to take up the tale of a ninth-century disinherited crown prince on religious pilgrimage as he approaches the end of his life. Yet this is, at least on the surface, the subject Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928-1987) engages with in “Takaoka’s Travels,” translated by David Boyd.
Thinking about Three or Four Things at Once: Katsuhiko Otsuji’s “I Guess All We Have is Freedom,” Translated from Japanese by Matt Fargo
What impresses me, then, about Katsuhiko Otsuji’s “I Guess All We Have is Freedom”—translated into deliciously playful and decadent English by Matt Fargo—is the way Otsuji’s odd turns and tangents feel at once like true stream of consciousness and yet circle back in again and again upon themselves, all in the name of demonstrating how unstable our sense of reality really is.