FEATURESDorothy Ko, Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding
Reviewed by Paul S. Ropp, 305
Sūn Hóngkāi 孙宏开, editor, Zhōngguó xīn fāxiàn yŭyán yánjiū cóngshū
中国新发现语言研究丛书 [New Found Minority Languages in China Series]
Reviewed by Katia Chirkova, 312
David C. Yu, translator, History of Chinese Daoism, Volume 1
Reviewed by James D. Sellmann, 322
Dr. Philip Culbertson (shown with co-authors Dr. Margaret Agee, left, and Cabrini ‘Ofa Makasiale, right) spoke with Mike Havoc of the University of Auckland’s 95bFM this month. Listen to the radio interview here.
Penina Uliuli: Contemporary Challenges in Mental Health for Pacific Peoples, written by Culbertson, Agee, and Makasiale, was published in September 2007 by University of Hawai‘i Press.
Azalea is a new annual journal of Korean literature and culture published by the Korea Institute at Harvard University and distributed by the University of Hawai‘i Press. Volume 1 is now available.
Azalea aims to promote Korean literature among English-language readers. The first volume includes works of several contemporary Korean writers and poets, as well as essays and book reviews by Korean studies professors in the United States. Azalea will introduce to the world new writers and also promising translators. The journal will provide the academic community of Korean studies with well-translated texts for college classes. Writers from elsewhere in the world will also share their experience of Korean literature or culture with wider audiences.
David R. McCann
Editor’s Note, 7
“Azalea is about Korean literature and literary culture, and therefore about writing, publishing, translating, and reading. The writing has already happened, the translation too, but now for the reading! We have looked at original works, wondering who might best translate a gem. Or we have discovered a strong translation and asked, ‘Can we publish it?’ And how might artwork of various kinds, or perhaps photographs of Korea contemporaneous with the literary works, be added to the mix? The occasional hortatory note, such as my own in this issue about the 1953 short story ‘Cranes’ by Hwang Sunwŏn, may add another edge, perhaps, to the reader’s framing and reframing of the piece.” —from the Editor’s Note
In Hawai‘i and elsewhere in the tropics, the change in seasons often goes unnoticed. Sun and Rain: Exploring Seasons in Hawai‘i, by Stephanie Feeney, will help children recognize and appreciate the seasons in Hawai‘i by calling attention to subtle details in the world around them. Color photographs vividly illustrating plants, animals, and weather patterns make the book suitable for young children, while older ones will find the clear, simple text engaging and instructive. A section for parents and teachers includes ideas on sharing the book with children of different ages.
Photography by Jeff Reese, David Boynton, Ron Dahlquist, Moku Kaaloa, Melissa Kim Mosher, and others.
December 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3088-5 / $13.95 (CLOTH)
Stephanie Feeney is the author of several other books for children published by University of Hawai‘i Press: A Is for Aloha, Hawaii Is a Rainbow, and Sand to Sea: Marine Life of Hawaii.
Arranged around a set of provocative themes, the essays in Sitings: Critical Approaches to Korean Geography, edited by Timothy R. Tangherlini and Sallie Yea, engage in the discussion from various critical perspectives on Korean geography. Part One, “Geographies of the (Colonial) City,” focuses on Seoul during the Japanese colonial occupation from 1910–1945 and the lasting impact of that period on the construction of specific places in Seoul. In Part Two, “Geographies of the (Imagined) Village,” the authors delve into the implications for the conceptions of the village of recent economic and industrial development. In this context, they examine both constructed space, such as the Korean Folk Village, and rural villages that were physically transformed through the processes of rapid modernization. The essays in “Geographies of Religion” (Part Three) reveal how religious sites are historically and environmentally contested as well as the high degree of mobility exhibited by sites themselves. Similarly, places that exist at the margins are powerful loci for the negotiation of identity and aspects of cultural ideology. The final section, “Geographies of the Margin,” focuses on places that exist at the margins of Korean society.
Sitings is the latest volume in the Hawai‘i Studies on Korea series, published by University of Hawai‘i Press and the Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai‘i.
December 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3138-7 / $58.00 (CLOTH)
Japan joined the League of Nations in 1920 as a charter member and one of four permanent members of the League Council. Until conflict arose between Japan and the organization over the 1931 Manchurian Incident, the League was a centerpiece of Japan’s policy to maintain accommodation with the Western powers. The picture of Japan as a positive contributor to international comity, however, is not the conventional view of the country in the early and mid-twentieth century. Rather, this period is usually depicted in Japan and abroad as a history of incremental imperialism and intensifying militarism, culminating in war in China and the Pacific. Even the empire’s interface with the League of Nations is typically addressed only at nodes of confrontation: the 1919 debates over racial equality as the Covenant was drafted and the 1931–1933 League challenge to Japan’s seizure of northeast China. Japan and the League of Nations: Empire and World Order, 1914–1938, by Thomas W. Burkman, fills in the space before, between, and after these nodes and gives the League relationship the legitimate place it deserves in Japanese international history of the 1920s and 1930s.
December 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-2982-7 / $58.00 (CLOTH)
William J. Gedney’s Comparative Tai Source Book, by Thomas John Hudak, provides accurate and reliable data from 1,159 common cognates found in 19 dialects from the Tai language family. Originally collected by noted Tai linguist, the late William J. Gedney, the data are organized into the three branches of the Tai language family, the Southwestern, the Central, and the Northern, to facilitate comparisons among the various sound systems within the individual branches and within the Tai language family as a whole.
This is the latest volume (number 34) in the Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication series.
December 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3190-5 / $30.00 (PAPER)
In the traditional Maori world, the moko, the facial or body tattoo, was a sign of great mana and status. Male warriors wore elaborate tattoos on their faces and bodies; women took more delicate chin tattoos. After almost dying out in the twentieth century, Maori tattooing is now experiencing a powerful revival, with many young Maori wearing the moko as a spectacular gesture of racial pride. Mau Moko: The World of Maori Tattoo, by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, with Linda Waimarie Nikora, is a lavishly illustrated look at the moko, from pre-European times to the present day.
December 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3253-7 / $49.00 (CLOTH)
Post-Enlightenment notions of culture, which have been naturalized in the West for centuries, require that art be autonomously beautiful, universal, and devoid of any practical purpose. The authors of What’s the Use of Art? Asian Visual and Material Culture in Context, edited by Jan Mrázek and Morgan Pitelka, seek to complicate this understanding of art by examining art objects from across Asia with attention to their functional, ritual, and everyday contexts. From tea bowls used in the Japanese tea ceremony to television broadcasts of Javanese puppet theater; from Indian wedding chamber paintings to art looted by the British army from the Chinese emperor’s palace; from the adventures of a Balinese magical dagger to the political functions of classical Khmer images—the authors challenge prevailing notions of artistic value by introducing new ways of thinking about culture.
December 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3063-2 / $58.00 (CLOTH)
