Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Island Writings
From Outsiders to Inside Views
Until the late 1970s, Hawaii literature was dominated by nonlocal Western writers ob-
serving Hawaii's exotic-seeming world from the outside. Best-selling titles include
James Michener's historical saga,
Hawaii
, and Paul Theroux's caustically humorous
Hotel Honolulu.
Since then, contemporary locally born writers have created an authentic literature of
Hawaii that evokes island life from the inside. Leading this has been
Bamboo Ridge
Press
(
www.bambooridge.com
)
, which for over 35 years has published contemporary
local fiction and poetry in an annual journal and launched the careers of many Hawaii
writers.
Press
(
www.bishopmuseum.org/press
)
have also made space for local writers to have
their voices heard, especially with insightful nonfiction writings about Hawaiian culture,
history, nature and art.
More than a pidgin dictionary,
Pidgin to Da Max,
by Douglas Simonson (aka Peppo), Pat
Sasaki and Ken Sakata, is a side-splitting primer on local life that's knocked around
forever because it (and its sequels) are so funny.
Pidgin Beyond Plantations
In 1975,
All I Asking for Is My Body,
by Milton Murayama, vividly captured sugar plant-
ation life for Japanese
nisei
(second-generation immigrants) around WWII. Murayama's
use of pidgin opened the door to an explosion of vernacular literature. Lois-Ann Yamana-
ka has won widespread acclaim for her poetry (
Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre,
1993) and stories (
Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers,
1996), in which pidgin embodies
her characters like a second skin.
Indeed, redeeming pidgin - long dismissed by academics and disparaged by the upper
class - has been a cultural and political cause for some. The hilarious stories (
Da Word,
2001) and essays (
Living Pidgin,
2002) of Lee Tonouchi, a prolific writer and play-
wright whose nickname is 'Da Pidgin Guerrilla,' argue that pidgin is not only essential to
understanding local culture, but also a legitimate language. Another great introduction to
pidgin is
Growing Up Local
(1998), an anthology of poetry and prose published by Bam-
boo Ridge Press.
