Category: Polynesia

Hawaii Murder Mystery

Posted on by stephchun

New Year’s Eve, 1934. While Honolulu celebrates with champagne and fireworks, someone is making away with the Bishop Museum’s portrait of King Kalakaua and its curator. A series of brutal murders follows, and an unlikely pair, newspaper reporter Mina Beckwith and visiting playwright Ned Manusia, find themselves investigating a twisted trail of clues in an attempt to recover the painting and uncover the killer. Prewar Honolulu comes to life in Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl’s Murder Casts a Shadow, a thoroughly entertaining mystery that evokes a colorful bygone era.

Victoria Kneubuhl is the author of Hawai‘i Nei: Island Plays, published by University of Hawai‘i Press.

June 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3217-9 / $14.95 (PAPER)

Milton Murayama’s Latest: Dying in a Strange Land

Posted on by stephchun

Milton Murayama’s long-awaited Dying in a Strange Land brings to a close the saga of the Oyama family. Familiar faces from All I Asking For Is My Body, Five Years on a Rock, and Plantation Boy return to advance the story from the years immediately following World War II to the 1980s. After her husband sinks them deep in debt, strong-willed and pragmatic Sawa takes charge of the family. The war ends and her children leave the plantation camp for Honolulu and the Mainland, but Sawa has little time for loneliness or regret. When asked by her neighbors if she misses them, she replies, “They must look for what they want.”

June 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3197-4 / $24.95 (PAPER)

Cultural Tourism and the Negotiation of Tradition

Posted on by stephchun

At the 1989 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, throngs of visitors gathered on the National Mall to celebrate Hawai‘i’s multicultural heritage through its traditional arts. The “edu-tainment” spectacle revealed a richly complex Hawai‘i few tourists ever see and one never before or since replicated in a national space. The program was restaged a year later in Honolulu for a local audience and subsequently inspired several spin-offs in Hawai‘i. In both Washington, D.C., and Honolulu, the program instigated a new paradigm for cultural representation. Based on archival research and extensive interviews with festival organizers and participants, American Aloha: Cultural Tourism and the Negotiation of Tradition by Heather A. Diamond, is an innovative cross-disciplinary study that uncovers the behind-the-scenes negotiations and processes that inform the national spectacle of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

June 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3171-4 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

An Anthology of Surf Writing

Posted on by stephchun

A thousand years after Hawaiians first paddled long wooden boards into the ocean, modern surfers have continued this practice, which has recently been transformed into a global industry. Pacific Passages: An Anthology of Surf Writing, edited by Patrick Moser, brings together four centuries of writing about surfing, the most comprehensive collection of Polynesian and Western perspectives on the history and culture of a sport currently enjoyed by millions of people around the world. The stories begin with Hawaiian legends and chants and are followed by the journals of explorers; the travel narratives of missionaries and luminaries such as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Jack London; and the contemporary observations of Tom Wolfe, William Finnegan, Susan Orlean, and Bob Shacochis.

May 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3155-4 / $32.00 (PAPER)

Myths and Music of Futuna, Vanuatu

Posted on by stephchun

Nokonofo Kitea (We Keep on Living This Way): Myths and Music of Futuna, Vanuatu, by Janet Dixon Keller and Takaronga Kuautonga, is centered on stories and songs from the Polynesian outlier West Futuna, Vanuatu. It aims to accomplish three goals: found a secular literature, celebrate and interpret the verbal arts, and connect ancestral discourses with the complex fabric of present-day lives. In the narratives islanders past and present enunciate personal and social struggles, articulate power dynamics, and proclaim the cultural geography and cosmology that promote community. History emerges through their perspectives. Gender, marriage, residence, exchange, and alliance are interrogated; gluttony and conservation juxtaposed.

“This volume is a superb example of the kind of quality that a collaborative project, between expatriate academics and Pacific Islanders, can produce. The collaborative strategy has major implications for the discipline of anthropology in general.” —Kirk Huffman, honorary curator, Vanuatu Cultural Center

February 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3113-4 / $50.00 (CLOTH)

Selected Works by Epeli Hauofa

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We Are Ocean, is a collection of essays, fiction, and poetry by Epeli Hau‘ofa, whose writing over the past three decades has consistently challenged prevailing notions about Oceania and prescriptions for its development. He highlights major problems confronted by the region and suggests alternative perspectives and ways in which its people might reorganize to relate effectively to the changing world.

Hau‘ofa’s essays criss-cross Oceania, creating a navigator’s star chart of discussion and debate. Spurning the arcana of the intellectual establishments where he was schooled, Hau‘ofa has crafted a distinctive—often lyrical, at times angry—voice that speaks directly to the people of the region and the general reader. He conveys his thoughts from diverse standpoints: university-based analyst, essayist, satirist and humorist, and practical catalyst for creativity. According to Hau‘ofa, only through creative originality in all fields of endeavor can the people of Oceania hope to strengthen their capacity to engage the forces of globalization.

January 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3173-8 / $22.00 (PAPER)

Jon Van Dyke Discussion and Book Signing

Posted on by stephchun

University of Hawai‘i law professor Jon Van Dyke will be discussing his recently published book, Who Owns the Crown Lands of Hawai‘i?, at the Ward Warehouse Native Books/Na Mea Hawai‘i on Sunday, January 27, 2008, from 3 to 5 pm. This free, public event will bring together interested persons in the community to focus on the complex legal history of Hawai‘i public lands and the questions raised by the book, such as: Could the Crown Lands form the core of a land base for an emerging Native Hawaiian nation? What about the lands in the private Ali‘i trusts? A book signing, light refreshments, and informal discussion will follow.

This month order a copy of Professor Van Dyke’s book at 20% off from the University of Hawai‘i Press website by clicking here.

The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island Societies Now in Paperback

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The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island Societies: Archaeological and Demographic Perspectives, edited by Patrick V. Kirch and Jean-Louis Rallu, is now available in paperback.

“This collection is a seminal contribution to the longstanding concern with demographic levels and change before and following European contacts with Pacific Island societies. . . . The essays represent exemplary interdisciplinary meshings and, in developing a new level of technique for this research, remind readers of the excellence of the earlier work as well. . . . Undoubtably, this will be a basic reference in Pacific Islands scholarship. Highly recommended.” —Choice

January 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3148-6 / $35.00 (PAPER)

Interview with Philip Culbertson

Posted on by stephchun

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.

The World of Maori Tattoo

Posted on by stephchun

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)

Micronesians in the Pacific War

Posted on by stephchun

Micronesians often liken the Pacific War to a typhoon, one that swept away their former lives and brought dramatic changes to their understandings of the world and their places in it. Those who survived the war years know that their peoples passed through a major historical transformation. Yet Pacific War histories scarcely mention the Islanders across whose lands and seas the fighting waged. Memories of War: Micronesians in the Pacific War, by Suzanne Falgout, Lin Poyer, and Laurence M. Carucci, sets out the fill that historical gap by presenting the missing voices of Micronesians and by viewing those years from their perspectives.

November 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3130-1 / $25.00 (PAPER)

Pacific Ethnomathematics

Posted on by stephchun

Pacific Ethnomathematics: A Bibliographic Study, a ground-breaking work by distinguished Pacific researcher Nicholas J. Goetzfridt, examines mathematical concepts and practices in Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. It covers number systems, counting, measuring, classifying, spatial relationships, symmetry, geometry, and other aspects of ethnomathematics in relation to a wide range of activities such as trade, education, navigation, construction, rituals and festivals, divination, weaving, tattooing, and music. In compiling nearly five hundred citations, Goetzfridt makes use of the vast resources of writing about the Pacific from the 1700s to the present. In addition to discussing Pacific knowledge systems in general, his introductory chapter includes a helpful overview of the relatively new field of ethnomathematics and important theoretical reflections on the discipline as a research program.

October 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3170-7 / $75.00 (CLOTH)

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