UH Press

China Review International, vol. 18, no. 2 (2011)

Posted on September 21, 2012 by alphabex

FEATURES

Good for Nothing? Jan De Meyer’s Translation of the Tang Text Wunengzi (reviewing Jan De Meyer, Wunengzi Nietskunner: Het taoïsme en de bevrijding van de geest (Wunengzi good for nothing: Taoism and the liberation of the mind))
Reviewed by Carine Defoort, 121

Finding Distinctive Chinese Characteristics in Qing Era Popular Protests (reviewing Ho-fung Hung, Protest with Chinese Characterististics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions in Mid-Qing Dynasty)
Reviewed by David D. Buck, 128

Struggle for Democracy: Hong Kong Is Increasingly Mainland-ized (Dalu-hua 大陆化): Taiwan on the Road Toward Hongkong-ization (Xianggang-hua/香港化) (reviewing Sonny Shiu-hing Lo, Competing Chinese Political Visions: Hong Kong versus Beijing on Democracy)
Reviewed by Jung-fang Tsai, 132

Another Installment of a Crucial Translation (reviewing Ssu-ma Ch’ien; William H. Nienhauser Jr., editor; J. Michael Farmer, Enno Giele, Christiane Haupt, Li He, Elisabeth Hsu, William H. Nienhauser Jr., Marc Nürnberger, and Ying Qin, translators, The Grand Scribe’s Records: Volume 9: The Memoirs of Han China, pt. 2.)
Reviewed by Grant Hardy, 159
Continue reading “China Review International, vol. 18, no. 2 (2011)”

An American Girl in the Hawaiian Islands – Author Talk at Native Books

Posted on September 13, 2012 by stephchun

When twenty-three-year-old Carrie Prudence Winter caught her first glimpse of Honolulu from aboard the Zealandia in October 1890, she had “never seen anything so beautiful.” She had been traveling for two months since leaving her family home in Connecticut and was at last only a few miles from her final destination, Kawaiaha’o Female Seminary, a flourishing boarding school for Hawaiian girls. As the daughter of staunch New England Congregationalists, Winter had dreamed of being a missionary teacher as a child and reasoned that “teaching for a few years among the Sandwich Islands seemed particularly attractive” while her fiancé pursued a science degree. During her three years at Kawaiaha’o, Winter wrote often and at length to her “beloved Charlie”; her lively and affectionate letters, excerpted in An American Girl in the Hawaiian Islands, selected and edited by Sandra Bonura and Deborah Day, provide readers with not only an intimate look at nineteenth-century courtship, but also many invaluable details about life in Hawai’i during the last years of the monarchy and a young woman’s struggle to enter a career while adjusting to surroundings that were unlike anything she had ever experienced.

September 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3627-6 / $39.00 (CLOTH)

Sandra Bonura will give a talk on the surprising discovery of Carrie Prudence Winter’s correspondence and photos and share additional insight into the lives of the students and teachers at Kawaiaha‘o Female Seminary during the turbulent years of the overthrow: Sunday, September 23, 3-5 pm, Native Books/Na Mea Hawai‘i, Ward Warehouse. Light refreshments will be served. A limited number of books airflown for this event will be available.

New in Dimensions of Asian Spirituality

Posted on September 12, 2012 by stephchun

Theravada Buddhism: The View of the Elders, by Asanga Tilakaratne, brings to life the age-old religious tradition of Theravada (literally, “view of the elders”) Buddhism as it is found in ancient texts and understood and practiced today in South and Southeast Asia. Following a brief introduction to the life of the historical Buddha and the beginning of his mission, the book examines the Triple Gem (the Buddha, his teachings, and the community of monastic followers) and the basic teachings of the Buddha in the earliest available Pali sources. Basic Buddhist concepts such as dependent co-origination, the four noble truths, the three trainings, and karma and its result are discussed in non-technical language, along with the Buddha’s message on social wellbeing. The author goes on to chronicle his own involvement as an observer-participant in “the Theravada world,” where he was born and raised.

Dimensions of Asian Spirituality
September 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3673-3 / $17.00 (PAPER)

Writing and Reading Japanese Characters for Upper-Level Proficiency

Posted on September 12, 2012 by stephchun

Students who have learned to read and write the kanji taught in Japanese schools run into the same difficulty that Japan university students themselves face: the number of characters included in the approved list is not sufficient for advanced reading and writing. Although each academic specialization requires supplementary kanji of its own, there is considerable overlap. With that in mind, this new, updated edition of Remembering the Kanji 3: Writing and Reading the Japanese Characters for Upper Level Proficiency, by James W. Heisig, employs the same methods as in Volume 1 and Volume 2 in this popular series to introduce additional characters useful for upper-level proficiency, bringing the total of all three volumes to 3,000 kanji.

The 3rd edition has been updated to reflect the 196 new kanji approved by the government in 2010, all of which have been relocated in Volume 1. The selection of 800 new kanji is based on frequency lists and cross-checked against a number of standard Japanese kanji dictionaries.

September 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3702-0 / $34.00 (PAPER)

Beyond East-West Binaries in (Auto)Biographical Studies

Posted on September 12, 2012 by stephchun

The thirteen essays in Locating Life Stories: Beyond East-West Binaries in (Auto)Biographical Studies, edited by Maureen Perkins, come from Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Malaysia, South Africa, and Hawai‘i. With a shared focus on the specific local conditions that influence the ways in which life narratives are told, the authors engage with a variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, history, media studies, and literature, to challenge claims that life writing is an exclusively Western phenomenon. Addressing the common desire to reflect on lived experience, the authors enlist interdisciplinary perspectives to interrogate the range of cultural forms available for representing and understanding lives.

A Biography Monograph
September 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3730-3 / $28.00 (CLOTH)
Published in association with the Biographical Research Center

A Journey into Hawaiian Ways of Knowing

Posted on September 12, 2012 by stephchun

As Hawaiians continue to recover their language and culture, the voices of kupuna (elders) are heard once again in urban and rural settings, both in Hawai‘i and elsewhere. How do kupuna create knowledge and “tell” history? What do they tell us about being Hawaiian? Adopted by a Midwestern couple in the 1950s as an infant, Leilani Holmes spent much of her early life in settings that offered no clues about her Hawaiian past—images of which continued to haunt her even as she completed a master’s thesis on Hawaiian music and identity in southern California. Ancestry of Experience: A Journey into Hawaiian Ways of Knowing documents Holmes’ quest to reclaim and understand her own origin story.

“Part memoir of a Kanaka academic in the diaspora searching for her ‘ohana, part historical and ethnographic celebration of Hawaiian culture, and part documentation of the reality of Kanaka ʻŌiwi constant communication with our kūpuna o ka pō (those who have passed into the pō), Ancestry of Experience is that rarity of rarities: an academic page-turner. Leilani Holmes’ book will bring readers to tears in its evocation of the enduring love and spiritual connection in an ʻohana that spans many generations, and make them gasp at the incredible series of ‘coincidences’ that leads to Leilani’s re-connection with her ʻohana.” —Noenoe Silva, professor of political science, University of Hawai‘i, and author of Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism

September 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3129-5 / $39.00 (CLOTH)

Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan

Posted on September 6, 2012 by stephchun

Manga and anime (illustrated serial novels and animated films) are highly influential Japanese entertainment media that boast tremendous domestic consumption as well as worldwide distribution and an international audience. Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan, by Jolyon Baraka Thomas, examines religious aspects of the culture of manga and anime production and consumption through a methodological synthesis of narrative and visual analysis, history, and ethnography.

“Studies of religion in popular culture often treat contemporary artifacts as if they are created ex nihilo, objects unmoored from any previous media or cultural conditions. Jolyon Baraka Thomas here charts a new course for engaging religion and the media of popular culture by demonstrating the myriad ways manga and anime matter. Such popular media matter to the creation of culture, to religion and the study thereof, as well as to the sometimes violent expressions of the extremities of faith. Thomas’ suggestive book ably proves that these comics are not the ‘funny papers,’ but deeply serious, just as they can be seriously playful.” —S. Brent Plate, author of Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World, and managing editor of Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief

September 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3654-2 / $25.00 (PAPER)

Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan

Posted on September 6, 2012 by stephchun

Since the 1990s the Japanese pet industry has grown to a trillion-yen business and estimates place the number of pets above the number of children under the age of fifteen. There are between 6,000 to 8,000 businesses in the Japanese pet funeral industry, including more than 900 pet cemeteries. Of these about 120 are operated by Buddhist temples, and Buddhist mortuary rites for pets have become an institutionalized practice. In Bones of Contention: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan, Barbara Ambros investigates what religious and intellectual traditions constructed animals as subjects of religious rituals and how pets have been included or excluded in the necral landscapes of contemporary Japan.

“In this thoughtfully argued book, Barbara Ambros adroitly maneuvers through difficult terrain—rituals of death, changing cultural conceptions, and the relationships between humans and other animals. While many such studies of animals as pets have focused on North American and European cultures, Ambros’ work in East Asian studies is groundbreaking. Bones of Contention opens up a whole new area in the rapidly emerging field of animal studies and religion.” —Laura Hobgood-Oster, Southwestern University, author of The Friends We Keep: Unleashing Christianity’s Compassion for Animals and Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition

September 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3674-0 / $29.00 (PAPER)

Growing Organic Fruit and Vegetables at Home

Posted on September 6, 2012 by stephchun

Fresh food straight from the garden—it’s got to be good for you. No matter what size your outdoor space, you can plant, grow, and harvest fresh organic produce using the information in The Small Food Garden: Growing Organic Fruit and Vegetables at Home, by Diana Anthony. Included are vegetables, herbs, and fruit, with tips on planting, growing, and caring for each plant. Investigate the options: look at containers, grow bags, raised beds, and window boxes. Discover what to plant where and how to provide water and nutrients to ensure you grow healthy, productive fruit and vegetables.

September 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3731-0 / $19.99 (PAPER)

Anti-trafficking and the Sex Trade along the Mekong

Posted on September 6, 2012 by stephchun

For those at the high end of the trafficking chain, the sex trade is an alluring and lucrative business: the supply of girls is constant, the costs of operations are low, and interference from law enforcement is weak to non-existent. Anti-trafficking organizations and governments commonly appropriate such market metaphors of supply and demand as they struggle with the moral-political dimensions of a business involving trade, labor, prostitution, migration, and national borders. But how apt are they? Is the sex trade really the perfect business? The Perfect Business? Anti-Trafficking and the Sex Trade along the Mekong, by Sverre Molland, is a provocative new book that examines the social worlds and interrelationships of traffickers, victims, and trafficking activists along the Thai-Lao border. It explores local efforts to reconcile international legal concepts, the bureaucratic prescriptions of aid organizations, and global development ideologies with on-the-ground realities of sexual commerce.

Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory
September 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3653-5 / $26.00 (PAPER)

Luke Roberts Interview at New Books in East Asian Studies

Posted on September 5, 2012 by stephchun

Carla Nappi of the New Books in East Asian Studies podcast calls Performing the Great Peace: Political Space and Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan “a gracefully-written study of the performance of authority in Tokugawa politics. It is also one of the most thoughtful historical studies that I’ve had the pleasure to read in a long time.” Listen to her interview with author Luke Roberts here.

Conversations with UH Press Authors

Posted on August 30, 2012 by UH Press Marketing

Besides the NPR “Crime in the City” interview with Victoria Kneubuhl that aired August 13, other “talk stories” with UH Press authors took place in the past month:

Hawai‘i Public Radio‘s The Conversation interviewed jazz saxophonist Gabe Baltazar about his memoir, If It Swings, It’s Music. Listen to the “Book ’em, Gabe-o…with a new autobiography” in the HPR archives for August 7.

Gabe was also featured in the “Old Friends” column that appeared in the August 29 edition of MidWeek, mailed to over 270,000 homes in Hawai‘i. Read the online version here.

On August 27, HPR’s The Conversation caught up with Jim Tranquada at Occidental College to talk about The ‘Ukulele: A History. Listen to the “Madeiran melody maker morphs into a jumping flea…” in the archived show.

The editor of MauiTime interviewed author Tom Coffman about his inspiring new book, I Respectfully Dissent: A Biography of Edward H. Nakamura. Read Coffman’s take on Justice Nakamura’s legacy as a labor attorney and Supreme Court justice in the August 23 cover story, “Standing Alone.”