UH Press

From Fu Manchu to Kung Fu Panda: Images of China in American Film

Posted on May 7, 2014 by uhpressnews

Throughout the twentieth century, American filmmakers have embraced cinematic representations of China. Beginning with D.W. Griffith’s silent classic Broken Blossoms (1919) and ending with the computer-animated Kung Fu Panda (2008), author Naomi Greene explores China’s changing role in the American imagination. Taking viewers into zones that frequently resist logical expression or more orthodox historical investigation, the films suggest the welter of intense and conflicting impulses that have surrounded China. They make clear that China has often served as the very embodiment of “otherness”—a kind of yardstick or cloudy mirror of America itself. It is a mirror that reflects not only how Americans see the racial “other” but also a larger landscape of racial, sexual, and political perceptions that touch on the ways in which the nation envisions itself and its role in the world.

In the United States, the exceptional emotional charge that imbues images of China has tended to swing violently from positive to negative and back again: China has been loved and—as is generally the case today—feared. Using film to trace these dramatic fluctuations, From Fu Manchu to Kung Fu Panda relates them to the larger arc of historical and political change. Suggesting that filmic images both reflect and fuel broader social and cultural impulses, the author argues that they reveal a constant tension or dialectic between the “self” and the “other.” Significantly, with the important exception of films made by Chinese or Chinese American directors, the Chinese other is almost invariably portrayed in terms of the American self. Placed in a broader context, this ethnocentrism is related both to an ever-present sense of American exceptionalism and to a Manichean world view that perceives other countries as friends or enemies.

Greene analyzes a series of influential films, including classics like Shanghai Express (1932), The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), The Good Earth (1936), and Shanghai Gesture (1941); important cold war films such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and The Sand Pebbles (1966); and a range of contemporary films, including Chan is Missing (1982), The Wedding Banquet (1993), Kundun (1997), Mulan (1998), and Shanghai Noon (2000). The author’s consideration makes clear that while many stereotypes and racist images of the past have been largely banished from the screen, the political, cultural, and social impulses they embodied are still alive and well.

Written by Naomi Greene

2014 | 280 pages | 31 illustrations
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8248-3836-2 | $25.00
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8248-3835-5 | $65.00

Critical Interventions Series

In Transit: The Formation of a Colonial East Asian Cultural Sphere

Posted on April 30, 2014 by uhpressnews

This work examines the creation of an East Asian cultural sphere by the Japanese imperial project in the first half of the twentieth century. It seeks to re-read the “Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere” not as a mere political and ideological concept but as the potential site of a vibrant and productive space that accommodated transcultural interaction and transformation. By reorienting the focus of (post) colonial studies from the macro-narrative of political economy, military institutions, and socio-political dynamics, it uncovers a cultural and personal understanding of life within the Japanese imperial enterprise.

The negative impact of Japanese imperialism on both nations and societies has been amply demonstrated and cannot be denied, but In Transit focuses on the opportunities and unique experiences it afforded a number of extraordinary individuals to provide a fuller picture of Japanese colonial culture. By observing the empire—from Tokyo to remote Mongolia and colonial Taiwan, from the turn of the twentieth century to the postwar era—through the diverse perspectives of gender, the arts, and popular culture, it explores an area of colonial experience that straddles the public and the private, the national and the personal, thereby revealing a new aspect of the colonial condition and its postcolonial implications.

Written by Faye Yuan Kleeman

2014 | 320 pages | 10 illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-8248-3860-7 | $52.00 | Cloth

The World of East Asia Series

2014 Hawaii Book & Music Festival: UH Press Tent & Author Events

Posted on April 30, 2014 by UH Press

University of Hawai‘i Press will once again be among the local publishers and vendors exhibiting at the Hawai‘i Book and Music Festival taking place this weekend, May 3–4 on the Frank F. Fasi Civic Grounds next to Honolulu Hale. Admission and parking are free. Go to the festival website to download a detailed schedule of events and PDF of the map shown here, as well as the HBMF app.

Presentations with UH Press authors and events to look for:

• A series of panels with the editors and contributors to The Value of Hawai‘i 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions (Saturday, 10am to 2pm)
• UC-Berkeley professor Patrick Kirch on his newest title, Kua‘āina Kahiko: Life and Land in Ancient Kahikinui, Maui (Saturday, 2pm). Dr. Kirch will also speak on his archaeological work at Kahikinui at Bishop Museum’s “Traditions of the Pacific” lecture series on Friday, May 2, 6:00–7:30pm.
• Anthropologist Carol MacLennan shares her book, Sovereign Sugar: Industry and Environment in Hawai‘i (Saturday, 2pm)
• Australians Andrew Warren and Chris Gibson launch their book, Surfing Places, Surfboard Makers, with a panel of board shapers (Saturday, 3pm). On Tuesday, May 6, noon to 1pm, they’ll be at UHM Saunders Hall 443 to present as part of the Spring Geography Lecture series.
• Maenette Ah Nee-Benham, Puakea Nogelmeier, and Jon Osorio from Hawai‘inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge talk about the Hawai‘inuiākea series of books (Saturday, 3pm)
• Selected readings from MĀNOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, as it celebrates its 25th anniversary (Sunday, 1 pm)
• UHM English professor Gary Pak discusses and reads from his latest novel, Brothers under a Same Sky (Sunday 3pm)
• UHM history professor John Rosa examines the social issues in his book, Local Story: The Massie-Kahahawai Case and the Culture of History (Sunday, 4pm)
• Award-winning writer Tom Coffman (I Respectfully Dissent; The Island Edge of America) speaks on the panel, “How Hawai‘i Changed America” (Sunday, 3pm).

Featured distributed titles:

• North Kohala resident William S. Chillingworth presents his book of awe-inspiring photographs, ‘Io Lani: The Hawaiian Hawk, accompanied by chant by Nathan Napoka, whose essays appear in the book (Saturday, 12 noon). A book launch celebration takes place Thursday, May 1, 6:00–8:30pm at Native Books/Nā Mea Hawai‘i—everyone welcome.
• Veteran journalist Denby Fawcett unveils the story of an iconic landmark in Secrets of Diamond Head: A History and Trail Guide (Sunday, 12 noon). This is the first time copies of this hot-off-the-press book will be available for sale.
• Three Hawaiian culture kūpuna, Corinne Chun, Manu Boyd, and Thomas Boyd, will share appreciation of the newly annotated edition of Queen Lili‘uokalani‘s classic memoir, Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen (Sunday, 1pm).
• A distinguished panel will discuss the themes in volume three of Japanese Eyes, American Heart (Sunday 4pm).

Authors will stop by after their presentations throughout the day, so follow them to the UH Press tent, located in the row of publishers along Honolulu Hale (left side of the map). We’ll have event-only discounts and will offer free shipping on orders placed at the booth for titles not available onsite.

See you there!

2014 Hawaii Book & Music Festival: UH Press Tent & Author Events

Posted on April 30, 2014 by UH Press

Presentations with UH Press authors and events to look for:

Featured distributed titles:

See you there!

Gender on the Edge: Transgender, Gay, and Other Pacific Islanders

Posted on April 29, 2014 by uhpressnews

Transgender identities and other forms of gender and sexuality that transcend the normative pose important questions about society, culture, politics, and history. They force us to question, for example, the forces that divide humanity into two gender categories and render them necessary, inevitable, and natural. The transgender also exposes a host of dynamics that, at first glance, have little to do with gender or sex, such as processes of power and domination; the complex relationship among agency, subjectivity, and structure; and the mutual constitution of the global and the local.

Particularly intriguing is the fact that gender and sexual diversity appear to be more prevalent in some regions of the world than in others. Gender on the Edge is an exploration of the ways in which non-normative gendering and sexuality in one such region, the Pacific Islands, are implicated in a wide range of socio-cultural dynamics that are at once local and global, historical, and contemporary. The authors recognize that different social configurations, cultural contexts, and historical trajectories generate diverse ways of being transgender across the societies of the region, but they also acknowledge that these differences are overlaid with commonalities and predictabilities.

Edited by Niko Besnier and Kalissa Alexeyeff

Not for sale in East and Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand

Sovereign Sugar: Industry and Environment in Hawaii

Posted on April 28, 2014 by uhpressnews

Although little remains of Hawai`i’s plantation economy, the sugar industry’s past dominance has created the Hawai`i we see today. Many of the most pressing and controversial issues—urban and resort development, water rights, expansion of suburbs into agriculturally rich lands, pollution from herbicides, invasive species in native forests, an unsustainable economy—can be tied to Hawai`i’s industrial sugar history.

In Sovereign Sugar, Carol MacLennan unravels the tangled relationship between the sugar industry and Hawai`i’s cultural and natural landscapes. It is the first work to fully examine the complex tapestry of socioeconomic, political, and environmental forces that shaped sugar’s role in Hawai`i. While early Polynesian and European influences on island ecosystems started the process of biological change, plantation agriculture, with its voracious need for land and water, profoundly altered Hawai`i’s landscape.

Encountering Modernity: Christianity in East Asia and Asian America

Posted on April 23, 2014 by uhpressnews

The story of Catholicism and Protestantism in China, Japan, and Korea has been told in great detail. The existing literature is especially rich in documenting church and missionary activities as well as how varied regions and cultures have translated Christian ideas and practices. Less evident, however, are studies that contextualize Christianity within the larger economic, political, social, and cultural developments in each of the three countries and its diasporas.

The contributors to Encountering Modernity address such concerns and collectively provide insights into Christianity’s role in the development of East Asia and as it took shape among East Asians in the United States. The work brings together studies of Christianity in China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan and its diasporas to expand the field through new angles of vision and interpretation. By moving beyond issues of missiology and church history, it asks how Christianity represented an encounter with modernity that set into motion tremendous changes throughout East Asia and in transnational diasporic communities in the United States.

Edited by Albert L. Park and David K. Yoo

2014 | 264 pages | 7 illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-8248-3947-5 | $42.00s | Cloth
Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies

Local Story: The Massie-Kahahawai Case and the Culture of History

Posted on April 22, 2014 by uhpressnews

The Massie-Kahahawai case of 1931–1932 shook the Territory of Hawai‘i to its very core. Thalia Massie, a young Navy wife, alleged that she had been kidnapped and raped by “some Hawaiian boys” in Waikīkī. A few days later, five young men stood accused of her rape. Mishandling of evidence and contradictory testimony led to a mistrial, but before a second trial could be convened, one of the accused, Horace Ida, was kidnapped and beaten by a group of Navy men and a second, Joseph Kahahawai, lay dead from a gunshot wound. Thalia’s husband, Thomas Massie; her mother, Grace Fortescue; and two Navy men were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter, despite witnesses who saw them kidnap Kahahawai and the later discovery of his body in Massie’s car. Under pressure from Congress and the Navy, territorial governor Lawrence McCully Judd commuted their sentences. After spending only an hour in the governor’s office at ‘Iolani Palace, the four were set free.

Local Story is a close examination of how Native Hawaiians, Asian immigrants, and others responded to challenges posed by the military and federal government during the case’s investigation and aftermath. In addition to providing a concise account of events as they unfolded, the book shows how this historical narrative has been told and retold in later decades to affirm a local identity among descendants of working-class Native Hawaiians, Asians, and others—in fact, this understanding of the term “local” in the islands dates from the Massie-Kahahawai case. It looks at the racial and sexual tensions in pre–World War II Hawai‘i that kept local men and white women apart and at the uneasy relationship between federal and military officials and territorial administrators. Lastly, it examines the revival of interest in the case in the last few decades: true crime accounts, a fictionalized TV mini-series, and, most recently, a play and a documentary—all spurring the formation of new collective memories about the Massie-Kahahawai case.

Written by John P. Rosa

2014 | 176 pages
Cloth 978-0-8248-2825-7, $45.00
Paper 978-0-8248-3970-3, $19.99

Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun: Essays by Zen Master Kim Iryop

Posted on April 21, 2014 by uhpressnews

The life and work of Kim Iryŏp (1896–1971) bear witness to Korea’s encounter with modernity. A prolific writer, Iryŏp reflected on identity and existential loneliness in her poems, short stories, and autobiographical essays. As a pioneering feminist intellectual, she dedicated herself to gender issues and understanding the changing role of women in Korean society. As an influential Buddhist nun, she examined religious teachings and strove to interpret modern human existence through a religious world view. Originally published in Korea when Iryŏp was in her sixties, Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun (Ŏnŭ sudoin ŭi hoesang) makes available for the first time in English a rich, intimate, and unfailingly candid source of material with which to understand modern Korea, Korean women, and Korean Buddhism.

Throughout her writing, Iryŏp poses such questions as: How does one come to terms with one’s identity? What is the meaning of revolt and what are its limitations? How do we understand the different dimensions of love in the context of Buddhist teachings? What is Buddhist awakening? How do we attain it? How do we understand God and the relationship between good and evil? What is the meaning of religious practice in our time? We see through her thought and life experiences the co-existence of seemingly conflicting ideas and ideals—Christianity and Buddhism, sexual liberalism and religious celibacy, among others.

This volume challenges readers with her creative interpretations of Buddhist doctrine and her reflections on the meaning of Buddhist practice. In the process she offers insight into a time when the ideas and contributions of women to twentieth-century Korean society and intellectual life were just beginning to emerge from the shadows, where they had been obscured in the name of modernization and nation-building.

Written by Kim Iryŏp
Translated by Jin Y. Park

2014 | 328 pages
Cloth ISBN 978-0-8248-3878-2, $49.00

Korean Classics Library: Philosophy and Religion

Tsai Ming-Liang and a Cinema of Slowness

Posted on April 17, 2014 by uhpressnews

How can we qualify slowness in cinema? What is the relationship between a cinema of slowness and a wider sociocultural “slow movement”? A body of films that shares a propensity toward slowness has emerged in many parts of the world over the past two decades. This is the first book to examine the concept of cinematic slowness and address this fascinating phenomenon in contemporary film culture.

Providing a critical investigation into questions of temporality, materiality, and aesthetics, and examining concepts of authorship, cinephilia, and nostalgia, Song Hwee Lim offers insight into cinematic slowness through the films of the Malaysian-born, Taiwan-based director Tsai Ming-liang. Through detailed analysis of aspects of stillness and silence in cinema, Lim delineates the strategies by which slowness in film can be constructed. By drawing on writings on cinephilia and the films of directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan, he makes a passionate case for a slow cinema that calls for renewed attention to the image and to the experience of time in film.

Tsai Ming-liang and a Cinema of Slowness will speak to readers with an interest in art cinema, queer studies, East Asian culture, and the question of time. In an age of unrelenting acceleration of pace both in film and in life, this book invites us to pause and listen, to linger and look, and, above all, to take things slowly.

Written by Song Hwee Lim
2014 | 240 pages | 29 illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-8248-3684-9 | $45.00s | Cloth

2014 Ka Palapala Po‘okela Awards: UH Press Nominees

Posted on April 15, 2014 by UH Press

Now marking its 21st year, the Ka Palapala Po‘okela Awards are presented annually by Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association to honor Hawai‘i’s finest books and their authors, illustrators, designers, and publishers. This year’s awards presentation is scheduled for Thursday, April 24, 6 to 9 pm, at the East-West Center auditorium, with local news reporter/commentator Howard Dicus as the ceremony emcee. Watch the HawaiiNewsNow Sunrise show on the morning of April 23 for a story on the awards.

Titles with a 2013 copyright date were eligible this year. The UH Press nominees are:

The Hikers Guide to O‘ahu: Updated and Expanded, by Stuart M. Ball, Jr.
(Excellence in Special-Interest Books)

Restoring Paradise: Rethinking and Rebuilding Nature in Hawai‘i, by Robert J. Cabin
(Excellence in Natural Science)

Ma‘i Lepera: Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i, by Kerri A. Inglis
(Excellence in Hawaiian Language, Culture, and History; Excellence in Nonfiction)

Brothers under a Same Sky, by Gary Pak
(Excellence in Literature)

Japanese Buddhist Temples in Hawai‘i: An Illustrated Guide, by George J. Tanabe and Willa Jane Tanabe
(Excellence in Special-Interest Books; Excellence in Design) UPDATE: Winner of the Award of Excellence in Special-Interest Books

Best wishes to each of our nominees!

Association for Asian American Studies Conference in San Francisco and the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference in Chicago

Posted on April 15, 2014 by uhpressnews

University of Hawai‘i Press is exhibiting at two conferences this week, showcasing new and recent titles from our Spring catalog as well as our Asian Studies catalog.

In San Francisco from April 16-19 at the Grand Hyatt for the Association for Asian American Studies Conference, acquisitions editor Masako Ikeda will be available to meet with prospective authors.

In Chicago, editor Stephanie Chun will be at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Conference from April 16-19 at the Marriott Chicago.

Some titles to look out for at both meetings: From Fu Manchu to Kung Fu Panda: Images of China in American Film, Scrutinized!: Surveillance in Asian North American Literature, Dubious Gastronomy: The Culture Politics of Eating Asian in the USA, and Capturing Contemporary Japan: Differentiation and Uncertainty.

Please visit us to see our latest titles and take advantage of the conference offer of a 20% discount and free shipping in the U.S. Free shipping applies only to orders received or placed at the conference.

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