168 pp. July 2004
paper, ISBN 978-0-8248-2757-1, $16.99
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Keywords: |
Asia
Hawaii
art
literature
religion
Buddhism |
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This Isn't a Picture I'm Holding: Kuan Yin
by Kathy J. Phillips
photos by Joseph Singer
Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies
“Kuan Yin may have originated in East Asia, but Phillips’ sometimes wry but always affectionate hybridization of the bodhisattva presents her as a timeless global phenomenon.” —Southern Humanities Review 39 (2005)
The bodhisattva Kuan Yin remains one of the most popular figures in Buddhism, loved and worshiped throughout Asia for over a millennium. She arrived in Hawai`i with the first Chinese plantation workers, each of whom would have kept a rice paper print of her over a small altar in his room. In this delightful book, Kathy Phillips and Joseph Singer celebrate Kuan Yin’s many incarnations in words and images that exhibit humor, poignancy, and the open-endedness of a koan. An introduction examines Kuan Yin and her place in religion, legend, art, changing social prescriptions for gender, and the everyday lives of Hawai`i’s people.
Kathy J. Phillips is professor of English at University of Hawai`i. Joseph Singer is a photographer, artist, and writer.
Read the introduction and an poem (PDF).
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