176 pp. July 2009
paper
, ISBN 978-0-910043-79-3, $18.00
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Keywords: |
Pacific
Hawaii
literature |
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Islands Linked by Ocean
by Lisa Linn Kanae
Distributed for Bamboo Ridge Press
“Honest, fragile, and fierce voices pull you in to the very center of characters that come to life on the pages of Lisa Linn Kanae’s stories—characters known to you so closely at times, you read passages twice to make sure you’ve read what you’ve read. Sista is real. No hold back. Oowwee, but nevamind. It is about the story, the characters, the pliable grace of another Bamboo Ridge writer’s collection that will cinch you in its vise clamoring in you for days after you close her book.”
—Lois-Ann Yamanaka
From the author of Sista Tongue come stories written with humor and compassion for characters who find themselves at crossroad moments where past informs present, young teach old, and love can mean holding on or letting go.
In “The Steersman,” a novice paddler shares her tempestuous yet life-affirming introduction to the tradition of outrigger canoe paddling: “In the canoe, we were nameless. We were numbers, and when we weren’t numbers, we were random expletives—scrub, donkey, idiot, stupid, jackass, lame ass, dumb ass . . . ” In “Born Again Hawaiian,” a young husband discovers how the personal impacts the political when his activist wife shows him how he must fight for what he loves most. And what happens when three local women take in the opera? “Dat suckah Pavarotti—he get um.”
The stories in this collection are familiar, like family. And like the father and daughter in the title story, the stories in Islands Linked by Ocean are “told and retold until the words swim through the listener’s veins and turn into blood.”
Not for sale in Hawaii
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