This issue is available online via JSTOR.

Presented by Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing

The Zigzag Way: New poetry from China

Guest-edited by Arthur Sze

This issue features the new generation of avant-garde poets from the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan. Nearly all of the writers featured here live in China under the scrutiny of the government, and the government’s overview extends to those outside the country as well. As a result, as author and translator Wang Ping explains in an interview with Arthur Sze, Chinese writers have learned to avoid censorship while striving to tell the truth: writing, as she says, in a “zigzag way.”

Continue reading “Manoa, vol. 10, no. 1 (1998): The Zigzag Way”

This issue is available online via JSTOR.

Presented by Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing

Century of Dreams: New writing from the Philippines

Guest-edited by Eric Gamalinda and Alfred A. Yuson

This issue features fiction, poetry, and essays from the Philippines as well as new work from the U.S. and throughout the Pacific. The publication of this volume coincides with the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Philippine Revolution (1898), and the feature illuminates the special relationship between America and the Philippine archipelago, with its 7,000 islands and 800 languages. Among the outstanding Filipino writers are Rowena Torrevillas, Bino A. Realuyo, Jose Y. Dalisay Jr., Cirilo F. Bautista, Marjorie M. Evasco, Simeon P. Dumdum Jr., Gemino H. Abad, Lakambini A. Sitoy, Michelle Cruz Skinner, Luis H. Francia, Eric Gamalinda, and Alfred A. Yuson. The US writing includes fiction by Barry Lopez, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Josip Novakovich, and Gordon Lish; poetry by Jane Hirshfield, Alberto Rios, Robert Dana, and Arthur Sze; and an essay by Donald Morrill. And, as always, there are insightful reviews of current books, such as one on a John Muir omnibus.

Continue reading “Manoa, vol. 9, no. 2 (1997): Century of Dreams”

This issue is available online via JSTOR.

Presented by Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing

Homeland: New writing from Aotearoa/New Zealand

Guest-edited by Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan

In his five-volume anthology of Maori literature, Te Ao Marama, Witi Ihimaera calls the 1990s the flowering of literature written by Maori people. “We may have come to a crossroads,” he writes, “of a literature of a past and a literature of a present and future.” MANOA is pleased to showcase some of the work from this new flowering in Homeland. The writing published here was gathered by guest editors Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan, and includes some of New Zealand’s best-known Maori authors Patricia Grace, Hone Tuwhare, Alan Duff, and Ihimaera—as well as emerging and less well known writers. Each of the pieces is an energetic exploration of homeland. Perceptions of home are also explored in essays by Susan Vreeland and David Tager, and in a symposium titled “Intimate Dwellings.” Other works in this collection include two previously untranslated stories by Nobel Prize author Yasunari Kawabata; an interview with Hugh Moorhead on his fifty-year search for the meaning of life; and, as always, outstanding North American fiction, poetry, and reviews. The art portfolio consists of photography by Hawai‘i artists Anne Kapulani Landgraf and Mark Hamasaki, known collectively as Piliamo‘o. Their work documents the restoration of the streams in Waiahole Valley on the island of O‘ahu. This too is an expression of homeland.