Category: Literature

UH Press Titles Honored at the 2009 Ka Palapala Award Ceremony

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University of Hawai‘i Press books were among the winners at this year’s Ka Palapala Po‘okela Awards Ceremony, held on May 9, 2009, at the Bishop Museum. The awards are presented by the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association to recognize the finest books published during the previous year.

Who Owns the Crown Lands of Hawai‘i, by Jon M. Van Dyke, took three top honors: Excellence in Hawaiian Culture, Text/Reference, and Nonfiction. The Nation calls Van Dyke’s book “definitive. Who Owns the Crown Lands of Hawaii? [is] certain to become the standard reference for that question.”

Ha‘ena: Through the Eyes of the Ancestors, by Carlos Andrade, received Honorable Mentions for Excellence in Hawaiian Culture and Nonfiction. Andrade’s work is an ambitious attempt to provide a unique perspective in the complex story of the ahupua‘a of Ha‘ena.

Dying in a Strange Land, by Milton Murayama, received an Honorable Mention for Excellence in Literature. Familiar faces from All I Asking For Is My Body, Five Years on a Rock, and Plantation Boy return to advance the story of the Oyama family from the years immediately following World War II to the 1980s.

Readings and Performances in Honor of Wayne Westlake

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To celebrate the recent publication of Westlake: Poems by Wayne Kaumualii Westlake (1947–1984), friends and supporters of the late poet will present readings and performances on Saturday, May 16, 2009, at ThirtyNineHotel from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

For a list of participants and event details, please go to http://www.freewebs.com/redflea

Westlake editor Richard Hamasaki will participate in the panel “Poets and Sense of Place” at the Hawai‘i Book and Music Festival, May 16, 2009, at Honolulu Hale. Click here for more details.

Victoria Kneubuhl at the National Museum of the American Indian

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As part of the Vine Deloria, Jr., Native Writers Series, Victoria Kneubuhl will be lecturing at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, May 13, 2009, 6:30 p.m.

Kneubuhl’s play The Conversion of Ka‘ahumanu (featured in Hawai‘i Nei: Island Plays) will be performed at the Museum’s Rasmuson Theater on Friday, May 15, 7:30 p.m., and on Saturday, May 16, 2009, 2:00 p.m. Follow the production of the play at http://www.nmainativetheater.blogspot.com/

Damien by Aldyth Morris Back in Print

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“A moving, theologically perceptive monologue delivered by Father Damien. In fervent, plain-spoken language, Morris’ play evokes the strength and spirituality of this complex man of God whose life of service to ‘a festering mass of flesh’ was assailed by contemporary detractors and also by his own inherently self-doubting nature.” —Booklist

The acclaimed Hawai‘i Public Television production of Morris’ play, starring Terence Knapp as Father Damien, received a Peabody Award in 1978.

Also available from University of Hawai‘i Press:

“Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai by Gavan Daws

“May be the best biography of Damien yet written. Carefully researched and reported, the author’s fascination with the man and the disease is transmitted to the reader.” —Library Journal

Leper Priest of Molokai: The Father Damien Story by Richard Stewart
“Rather than portraying his subject as a plaster saint, Stewart provides a full-bodied portrait of an inspirational, yet admittedly flawed, human being.” —Booklist

Molokai by O. A. Bushnell
This absorbing historical novel set in the late 1800s in Kalaupapa, where Damien ministered, “searches the hearts of the doomed and damned with an intense compassion. The author has painted the background of his novel with a knowing brush. . . . A vivid experience for the reader.” —New York Times Book Review

Father Damien will be canonized on October 11, 2009.

Voices from Okinawa

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Despite Okinawa’s long and close relationship with the United States, most Americans know little about the rich and remarkable culture of Japan’s southernmost islands. And they know even less about the Okinawan immigrants who brought their heritage to the U.S. over one hundred years ago. In this landmark publication—the first literary anthology showcasing Okinawan Americans—their voices are heard in plays, essays, and memoirs. Through the beauty, humor, and heartbreak in Jon Shirota’s award-winning plays, the experiences of an extraordinary people are illuminated. And in personal essays and interviews, the compelling life stories are told of June Hiroko Arakawa, Philip Ige, Mitsugu Sakihara, and Seiyei Wakukawa. The distinctive cultural perspectives and literary excellence of Voices from Okinawa, edited by Frank Stewart and Katsunori Yamazato, expand our definition of American literature, showing it to be more inclusive, complex, and multilayered than we have imagined.

Mānoa 21:1
February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3391-6 / $20.00 (PAPER)

Representations of the Exotic in Twentieth-Century Japanese Literature

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Readers worldwide have long been drawn to the foreign, the exotic, and the alien, even before Freud’s famous essay on the uncanny in 1919. Given Japan’s many years of relative isolation, followed by its multicultural empire, these themes seem particularly ripe for exploration and exploitation by Japanese writers. Their literary adventures have taken them inside Japan as well as outside, and how they internalized the exotic through the adoption of modernist techniques and subject matter forms the primary subject of The Alien Within: Representations of the Exotic in Twentieth-Century Japanese Literature, by Leith Morton.

“Leith Morton adds an exciting and valuable dimension to this field of criticism by introducing some relatively unknown but important writers and providing original and stimulating discussions of others who are under-treated but significant. By helping us look at these literary figures in a different light, he adds new layers to a fascinating subject.” —Susan Napier, Tufts University

February 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3292-6 / $56.00 (CLOTH)

Poems by Wayne Kaumualii Westlake

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In an all-too-brief life and literary career, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake produced a substantial body of poetry. He broke new ground as a poet, translated Taoist classical literature and Japanese haiku, interwove perspectives from his Hawaiian heritage into his writing and art, and published his work locally, regionally, and internationally. Westlake: Poems by Wayne Kaumualii Westlake (1947–1984) includes nearly two hundred of Westlake’s poems—most unavailable to the public or never before published.

“The poems run the whole gamut of emotions . . . and do so with immaculate and measured control of language and imagery . . . [T]his one collection, in my reckoning, establishes Westlake as one of Hawai‘i and the Pacific’s major poets.” —Albert Wendt

Talanoa: Contemporary Pacific Literature
January 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3067-0 / $17.95 (PAPER)

Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2008 Announced

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Each year Choice Magazine, the official publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries, compiles a distinguished list of Outstanding Academic Titles. The following three UH Press books were recognized for 2008. A complete list of titles will be available in Choice’s January 2009 issue.

Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China
by Grace S. Fong

“Takes the discussion in an exciting new direction. . . . The greatest contributions of this book . . . are the introductions of various women writers and the translations into English of their compositions, many discovered by the author and not heretofore translated into English. . . . Essential.” —Choice (November 2008)

Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s by Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano

“Since English-language scholars have rarely dealt with Japanese film of the 1920s and 1930s, outside the work of canonical directiors like Kenji Mizoguchi, this study is welcome. . . . Wada-Marciano offers groundbreaking analyses of such genres as the ‘middle-class’ film and the woman’s film. A final chapter provides a rich study of the links between national identity, modernity, and the signature style of Shochiku film studio. The end result is sure to stand as a definitive work for years to come. Essential.” —Choice (October 2008)

The Sociology of Southeast Asia: Transformations in a Developing Region by Victor T. King

“Victor King has produced a lucid, comprehensive, and challenging analysis of the state-of-the-art of Southeast Asian sociology. The book is not only an excellent textbook for courses on Southeast Asia or development sociology, but also ‘required reading’ for all social scientists embarking on research on the area. I am certain that it will become a long-lasting addition to the standard literature on Asia.” —Hans-Dieter Evers, University of Bonn

UH Press Publishes Award-winning Chinese Novel

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University of Hawai‘i Press is pleased to announce the publication of Banished!, winner of the prestigious Chinese Novel Prize in 2003. Written by Han Dong, one of the country’s most important avant-garde poets, the book is set in 1969, while China is in the throes of the Cultural Revolution. The Tao family is banished to the countryside, forced to leave comfortable lives in Nanjing to be reeducated in the true nature of the revolution by the peasants of Sanyu village.

“This is a poet’s novel, written in a spare and elegant style, gracefully rendered in English. Han Dong finds irony and humor in his tale of one family caught up in the injustices and absurdities of Cultural Revolution China, and through his chronicle of the vicissitudes faced by the Taos he tells the story of millions whose lives were disrupted in that turbulent decade.” —Richard King, University of Victoria

November 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3340-4 / $26.00 (PAPER)

Scheduled Appearances for Milton Murayama

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Maui-born author Milton Murayama will be visiting Hawai‘i to sign copies of his fourth novel, Dying in a Strange Land, which completes the tetralogy of the Oyama family saga that began with his 1975 classic, All I Asking for Is My Body. Murayama followed this with Five Years on a Rock and Plantation Boy in 1994 and 1998, respectively.

Book Signings
Saturday, November 8, 2:00-3:00 pm: Barnes & Noble Lahaina
Sunday, November 9, 3:00-4:00 pm: Borders-Kahului
Tuesday, November 11, 2:00-3:00 pm: Barnes & Noble Ala Moana
Saturday, November 15, 2:00-3:00 pm: Borders-Pearlridge Center
Sunday, November 16, 2:00-3:00 pm: Borders-Ward Centre

“Revisiting Milton Murayama: From Plantation to Diaspora”
The public is also invited to attend a special event scheduled for Wednesday, November 12, from 6:30-8:30 pm at the UH-Manoa Art Auditorium. The program will feature the premiere showing of a video interview with Murayama by Gary Pak and remarks by Marie Hara and other noted Hawai‘i writers. A short reading and talk by Murayama and an autograph session will follow. Light refreshments will be served. This event is sponsored by University of Hawai‘i Press with the UH Manoa English Department, Bamboo Ridge Press, and the University of Hawai‘i Diversity and Equity Initiative, and in partnership with the Hawai‘i Council for the Humanities, with additional support from the “We, The People” initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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