Locked in too-cold rooms, often water-stained, moldy and otherwise cloaked in homeliness, hide some of the most unusual specimens of literary beauty in the world. The last remnants of vanished worlds exist on the pages of rare books housed in collections throughout the Islands,… [»Read]
The Bone Hook Ian MacMillan Mutual Publishing, 2009 201 pages, $13.95 Can we get a Pidgin immersion school? Not to replace the Hawaiian immersion movement, which is maybe the best thing to happen to us culturally and educationally in a generation. But we need a Pidgin program,… [»Read]
Talking Hawaii’s Story: Oral Histories of an Island People Michi Kodama-Nishimoto, Warren S. Nishimoto, Cynthia A. Oshiro University of Hawaii Press, 309 pages, $19 It’s difficult to talk about oral history without referring to Studs Terkel, the legendary researcher… [»Read]
Voices from Okinawa F. Stewart and K. Yamazato, eds. University of Hawaii, $20 In Jon Shirota’s play, Lucky Come Hawaii, the dining room where most of the action takes place is “not markedly Japanese, Hawaiian, or American. It is actually a combination of… [»Read]
Hawaiian Idyll: The Prints of John Melville Kelly Natasha Roessler Drucker, Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2009, 158 pages, $39.95 In a small-scale but profound exhibition of art and historical documentation, it becomes clear that John Melville Kelly’s creative legacy is as… [»Read]
A Woman In The South Pacific Sherée Lipton Belknap Publishing & Design, 2009 162 pages, $29.95 “I came of age in the islands of Oceania. The South Pacific is where I bloomed, fell in love, had my heart broken, and found God. Both my daughters were conceived under coconut… [»Read]
Paul Malmont Simon & Schuster, 2009 386 pages, $15 Paul Malmont’s 2006 novel The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, an homage to period-piece pulp fiction, established Malmont as a writer to watch and put him on many end-of-year best book lists. Malmont’s latest effort,… [»Read]
Going Against the Grain:When Professionals in Hawaii Choose Public Schools Instead of Private Schools Ann Shea Bayer University of Hawaii Press 294 pages, $26 Say one thing for University of Hawaii at Manoa professor Ann Shea Bayer: she’s got good timing. While… [»Read]
Na Mea Hunahuna o ka Nuhou:Selected Articles from Hawaiian Language Newspapers Malcolm Naea Chun First People’s Productions 63 pages, $12.95 We couldn’t resist–this rarified collection of articles translated into English from 19th century Hawaiian-language newspapers… [»Read]
Since its inception in 1995, Tinfish Press has consistently been a spunky purveyor of local writing. Susan Schultz, a professor of English at UH–Manoa, started the small company to provide a platform for experimental voices from the Pacific. From the start, Tinfish has… [»Read]
Sabrina Velazquez is a do-it-yourself singer-songwriter based in Honolulu. She doesn’t have an agent, a manager or a record label, and she records on a shoestring budget. Other than her folksy guitar playing and sultry vocals, a demo she recorded last year featured Velazquez… [»Read]
More than anything, it’s a compulsion. Nicholas Zou can’t pick up a violin without tweaking its sound, meticulously moving the sound post, adjusting the bridge or otherwise tinkering with the instrument to make it sing the way it ought to. And Zou knows what he’s doing…. [»Read]
When you’re a “junkie of quality,” as A.J. Feducia describes himself, a search for music equipment that meets your expectations usually leads to spending a lot of money. Or: you could make your own. Feducia has only been an electric guitarist for six years. That’s… [»Read]
The Throwdowns “Musically, our influences are all over the place,” said Erin Smith, lead-singer of the Maui-based alternative-rock group, The Throwdowns. “If we’re driving around with an iPod, one second we’ll be listening to Metric, and the next second we’ll… [»Read]
It started as an “open-mic” night; you know, the smoke-filled bar full of wannabe singers and crappy drink specials where the owner really just wants to make a buck off of sucky local talent. But when a dozen musicians walked in to the Crouching Lion Inn only six months… [»Read]
