Join Mānoa journal at AWP in Kansas City, MO

Join Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Literature at the Association for Writing Programs (AWP) Conference & Bookfair in Kansas City, MO from Feb. 7-10.

Bookfair

Stop by the Mānoa table located at #T3313 to talk story, peruse and purchase titles, and get a discount on subscriptions.

Panels

Rajiv Mohabir guest edits the next Mānoa volume, Karahee from the Cane Fields: Writing from the Coolie Diaspora. Join Rajiv on these two panels on Thursday, Feb. 8:

Speaking Mosaics: Hybrid Narratives & the Prism of Identity 



Panelists: Marissa Landrigan, Rajiv Mohabir, Monica Prince, Adriana Es Ramirez, Caitlyn Hunter

9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m., Room 2504AB, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2 T129

Accustomed to wielding multiple perspectives, many BIPOC, queer, and neurodivergent writers are drawn to fragmented or hybrid forms: multimodal cross-genre mosaics of personal experience, and cultural, social, political, or natural history. Our panelists work across poetry, performance, nonfiction, and folklore, and will explore the craft and challenges of fragmented forms, offering inspiration and motivation to embrace hybridity as a way to claim space for historically marginalized communities.

Fragmented Inheritances: Lyric Essay and Intergenerational Trauma

Panelists: Joanna Penn Cooper, Kiki Petrosino, James Allen Hall, Rajiv Mohabir

10:35 a.m. to 11:50 a.m., Room 2503AB, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2, T154

Lauded essayists discuss experiments with form, including fragmentary approaches to narrative, and how they leave space for both readers and writers to approach subject matter about difficult legacies. How does the use of fragments allow ways into incomplete or contested family and cultural narratives around war trauma; religious persecution; racial, sexual, and gender identity; and violence? How might fragmented narrative further the possibilities for sharing and transmuting difficult legacies?

Subscribe to Mānoa

A one-year subscription gets you copies of two new issues, Here was Once the Sea guest edited by Rina Garcia Chua, Esther Vincent Xueming, and Ann Ang and Karahee of the Cane Fields guest edited by Rajiv Mohabir.

A two-year subscription additionally includes two additional issues from series editor S. Shankar.

Subscribe to Mānoa here.


Explore Mānoa Journal

For the next three months, enjoy these two pieces from Here was Once the Sea freely available on Project MUSE.

Here was Once the Sea: An Anthology of Southeast Asian Ecowriting
Rina Garcia Chua, Esther Vincent Xueming, and Ann Ang

Finding Faults and Dragons
Alexandra Bichara 

Journals: New research in Buddhist Christian Studies, Hawaiian History, Korean Religions + More

Front cover of Buddhist-Christian Studies volume 43 (2023)
Manoa 35-1 CHamoru

New CHamoru Literature

Volume 35, Number 1 (2023)

Hami Hu Ma’hasso Hamyo
Jay Baza Pascua

My First Time Alone in Ritidian’s Cave
Jacob l. Camacho

Maga’leena
Yasmine Romero

Songs of the South
Humlåo Evans

Aunty’s Candle
Mary Therese Perez Hattori

Find more literature at Project MUSE.

Pacific Science

Volume 77, Number 1 (2023)

Impacts of Tropical Rainforest Conversion on Soil Nutrient Pools in Viti Levu, Fiji
Shipra Shah and Ami Sharma

Automated Recording Unit Detection Probabilities: Applications for Montane Nesting Seabirds
Andrew J. Titmus and Christopher A. Lepczyk

On the Origin and Current Distribution of the Oceania Snake-Eyed Skink (Cryptoblepharus poecilopleurus) in the Hawaiian Archipelago
Valentina Alvarez, Samuel R. Fisher, Anthony J. Barley, Kevin Donmoyer, Mozes P. K. Blom, Robert C. Thomson, and Robert N. Fisher

Abarenicola pacifica Burrowing Behavior and Its Implications for Zostera marina Seed Burial, Restoration, and Expansion
Ryley S. Crow, Rachel Merz, Megan Dethier, and Sandy Wyllie-Echeverria

Differences in Feeder Visitation by Invasive Rose-Ringed Parakeets (Psittacula krameri) Between Hawaiian Islands
Steven C. Hess, C. Jane Anderson, Eric A. Tillman, William P. Bukoski Aaron B. Shiels, Page E. Klug, Shane R. Siers, and Bryan M. Kluever

Find more research articles at Project MUSE.

MĀNOA journal at AWP

Join Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Literature at the Association for Writing Programs (AWP) Conference & Bookfair in Seattle, WA from March 9-11.

Bookfair, March 9-11

Stop by the Mānoa table located at #309 to talk story, peruse and purchase titles, and get a discount on subscriptions.

Get a signed copy of Out of the Shadows of Angkor, Thursday, March 9, 1-3 p.m.

Putsata Reang, Greg Santos, Sharon May, and Sokunthary Svay will be signing copies of the recent Mānoa volume, Out of the Shadows of Angkor in the Mānoa booth, #309.

Panel: Celebrating Pacific Island Literature, Thursday, March 9, 1:45-3 p.m.

Ballroom 1, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 5

Mānoa journal is sponsored by the University of Hawai‘i’s Department of English. Join two creative writing professors, editor Craig Santos Perez and Kristiana Kahakauwila, along with William Nu‘utupu Giles for a great reading and conversation on Pacific Island literature in this Kundiman panel.

Panel: Cambodian Poetry, Prose, and Translation Today, Friday, March 10, 3:20-4:35 p.m.

Rooms 338-339, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 3

Guest editor Sharon May and contributors Sokunthary Svay, Putsata Reang, and Greg Santos will read and discuss their work on Out of the Shadows of Angkor.

AWP23 thumbnail attachment

Subscribe to Mānoa

A one-year subscription gets you print copies or digital access to Out of the Shadows of Angkor: Cambodian Poetry, Prose, and Performance Throughout the Ages (Volume, 33-2 and 34-1) and In the Silence: International Fiction, Poetry, Essays, and Performance (Volume 34, Issue 2). 

A two-year subscription additionally includes two new issues, including New CHamoru Literature edited by Craig Santos Perez (Volume 35, Issue 1) and an issue featuring the eco-literature of Southeast Asia (Volume 35, Issue 2). 

Subscribe to Mānoa here.

Journals: Kapaemahu, Remembering Miriam Fuchs, Burmese Literature + Visuality and Materiality in Postwar Japan

Biography

Volume 45, Number 2 (2022)

The new issue contains the following articles as a remembrance for Miriam Fuchs who was an active contributor to the journal. It also contains the annual bibliography:

Miriam Fuchs, Life Writing, and Life
Craig Howes

A Voyage Beyond the Text as Self: Remembering Miriam Fuchs Holzman
Cynthia G. Franklin

Miriam, The Bookies, and I
Joseph H. O’Mealy

In the Warm Waters of Lanikai: Paddling with Miria
Leinaala Davis

A Tribute to Miriam Fuchs: With Love from Her Student
Amy Calrson

Find more articles at Project MUSE.

Front cover of Manoa 34-2

Mānoa

Volume 34, Number 2 (2022)
In the Silence

The new Mānoa issue features a special section on the literature of Burma/Myanmar. In the introduction, “To Write a History,” guest editors Penny Edwards, ko ko thett, and Kenneth Wong begin:

“‘How to write history / in a language / that has no past tense’ asks co-editor ko ko thett in his poetry collection The Burden of Being Burmese. How to publish literature under a military regime with no future tense?

“In Myanmar today, the simplest utterance is punishable as the defamation of the state. A song, a poem, a music video, an elegy are all open invitations to a cowardly regime to pursue their authors with impunity.”

Find literature from Burma/Myanmar, South Asia and more at Project MUSE.

Review of Japan Culture and Society

Volume 32 (2020)

The new issue includes the special section, “Visuality and Materiality in Postwar Japan” guest edited by Álex Bueno and Yasutaka Tsuji, and “Japan in Los Angeles” edited by Rika Hiro. Selections include:

Design as Cultural Representation: Visuality and Materiality in Postwar Japan
Yasutaka Tsuji (Translated by Álex Bueno)

Japan’s Postwar Building: Japanese Architecture and the West
Ryuichi Hamaguchi

Nature and Thought in Japanese Design
Teiji Itoh

Yamashiro: Imagined Home and the Aesthetics of Hollywood Japanism
Dianne Lee Shen

Bruce Yonemoto: Made in Occupied Japan
Rika Hiro

Find more articles, an interview with Manika Nagare, and literature in translation at Project MUSE.

New MĀNOA Anthology Offers Unprecedented Collection of Cambodian Literature

Out of the Shadows of Angkor is a groundbreaking collection of prose, poetry, performance pieces, and visual art that emerges from a thirty-year effort of five guest editors to gather and champion Cambodian literary and cultural works. 

In the nearly 400-page MĀNOA volume, this anthology features rare works translated into English for the first time, and has also helped to rescue writing lost during the Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979). Beautifully designed, Out of the Shadows of Angkor is an outstanding selection of Cambodian writing from the past and present.

Out of the Shadow of Angkor also features the stunning paintings of Theanly Chov from his Surviving series, which capture the future-forward dreams of many Cambodians today. 

Guest editors: Sharon May, Christophe Macquet, Trent Walker, Phina So, Rinith Taing

Series editor: Frank Stewart

Editor Q&A: Cambodian Writing Through the Ages 

Editors of Out of the Shadows of Angkor. Top row, L to R: Sharon May, Christophe Macquet, Trent Walker Bottom row: Rinith Taing, Phina So, Frank Stewart Photo courtesy of: Trent Walker
Editors of Out of the Shadows of Angkor. Top row, L to R: Sharon May, Christophe Macquet, Trent Walker. Bottom row: Rinith Taing, Phina So, Frank Stewart. Photo courtesy of Trent Walker.

Cambodian writers have been recording their literary gifts for over a millennium and a half. Yet very little Cambodian literature originally composed in Khmer, Sanskrit, or French is available in English. Our anthology seeks to change that,” say guest editors Trent Walker and Sharon May. In this Q&A, Walker and May tell us how this book came together. 

Out of the Shadows of Angkor in Your Classroom

Inscription of a "dharma song" Hymn to the Buddhaʻs Feet. The poem is traditionally chanted with complex melodies in Cambodian rituals. Photo courtesy of Trent Walker.
Inscription of a “dharma song” Hymn to the Buddhaʻs Feet. The poem is traditionally chanted with complex melodies in Cambodian rituals. Photo courtesy of Trent Walker.

Educators considering teaching from this landmark collection may have students from Cambodia or Southeast Asia and its diasporas, or students in a global literature course. The works in Out of the Shadows of Angkor may either stand alone or be read alongside other works of literature from the region of Southeast Asia.  

The University of Hawai‘i Press offers examination copies upon request, as well as complimentary desk copies for educators who order 10 or more copies for their classrooms. 

Learn more about our Desk and Exam Copy here.

Out of the Shadows of Angkor: Cambodian Poetry
MĀNOA Vol. 33 Issue 2 & Vol. 34 Issue 1 (2022)

Out of the Shadows of Angkor

Read free on Project MUSE:

On Cambodian American Writers

by Sokunthary Svay

A Small Request

by Khun Srun, Christophe Macquet, Sharon May

Subscribe to MĀNOA

All MĀNOA subscribers will receive the issue, Out of the Shadows of Angkor, upon print publication in September 2022 and an additional volume on Burmese literature in Winter 2022. A one-year, individual subscription costs $35.

Order Out of the Shadows of Angkor

Order your copy on Amazon for $25. Shipping begins in September 2022. 

Editor Q&A: Celebrating Cambodian Poetry, Prose, and Performance in New Landmark Anthology

Editors Sharon May and Trent Walker on Out of the Shadows of Angkor, the newest title from Mānoa journal, that publishes this month.

Out of the Shadows of Angkor, the newest title from MĀNOA, emerges from the thirty-year effort of a community seeking to bring together Khmer works of literature. In doing so, they not only translated rare works into English for the first time, but also helped to salvage, reconstruct, and resuscitate parts of books destroyed by the Cambodian Civil War. This issue represents a selection of what has been achieved. 

Readers will find in this volume: a comprehensive range of Khmer works over 1400 years; translations of classical texts in ancient script; selections of modern Cambodian poetry, prose, and folk theater; and contemporary writings by Cambodian refugees and children of the diaspora living in countries from Australia to the U.S., Canada, and Europe. This is a companion volume to In the Shadow of Angkor (2004).

Below, guest editors Trent Walker and Sharon May tell us about how this book came together. 

_________________________________________________________

Editors of Out of the Shadows of Angkor. Top row, L to R: Sharon May, Christophe Macquet, Trent Walker Bottom row: Rinith Taing, Phina So, Frank Stewart  Photo courtesy of: Trent Walker
Editors of Out of the Shadows of Angkor. Top row, L to R: Sharon May, Christophe Macquet, Trent Walker. Bottom row: Rinith Taing, Phina So, Frank Stewart. Photo courtesy of Trent Walker.

University of Hawai‘i Press: What was the inspiration for this issue?

Trent Walker and Sharon May, Editors: Cambodian writers have been recording their literary gifts for over a millennium and a half. Yet very little Cambodian literature originally composed in Khmer, Sanskrit, or French is available in English. Our anthology seeks to change that by joining a plethora of original literary translations of Cambodian texts with works composed in English by members of the global Cambodian diaspora. 

UHP: What is the book essentially about?

Editors: Out of the Shadows of Angkor unites the work of 33 different authors across fourteen centuries of Cambodian history. Their poems, short stories, novels, and essays are paired with a range of anonymous texts from the seventh century to the present, including inscriptions, oaths, chants, songs, epics, folk tales, and theater. Nineteen different translators make these works shine in English, offering accessible notes that frame these Cambodian compositions for a wide audience. A special emphasis on twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers, including those across four continents of the diaspora, showcases the present and emerging future of post-Khmer Rouge literature both inside and outside Cambodia.

UHP: Who was involved, and what was the process like of putting it together?

Editors: Sharon May, guest editor of In the Shadow of Angkor, a smaller but path-breaking 2004 anthology of contemporary Cambodian literature published by MĀNOA and University of Hawai‘i Press, brought together a team of four fellow guest editors over the course of over a decade. The guest editors—Phina So, Rinith Taing, Christophe Macquet, and Trent Walker, along with Sharon—have each long been leaders in advocating for Cambodian writers, literature, and publishing. We relied on each other’s strengths and on wide networks of literary friendships in Cambodia and beyond to bring the project to completion.

UHP: Tell us about the title. What’s the story of how you came to this title?

Editors: The title of the first volume, In the Shadows of Angkor, arose when Sharon was brainstorming with her friend Bhavia Wagner; Cambodian literature has long been in the shadows of the great temples and the tragedies of war, at least in the eyes of the West. As a considerably larger, non-overlapping companion volume to that 2004. MĀNOA anthology, Out of the Shadows of Angkor celebrates Cambodian poetry, prose, and performance emerging onto the world stage. Outside of the Khmer diaspora, Anglophone readers are still likely to only know Cambodia for the horrors of the Khmer Rouge or the splendors of Angkor Wat. Our book presents for the first time in English the vast spectrum of Cambodian writing through the ages—by turns joyous and tragic, pithy and elegant, tender and whip-smart. 

The Accused (1973), an account of imprisonment by Khun Srun, is nearly impossible to find in Cambodia today. An English translation of the excerpt can be found in Out of the Shadows of Angkor.  Photo courtesy of: Sharon May
The Accused (1973), an account of imprisonment by Khun Srun, is nearly impossible to find in Cambodia today. An English-translated excerpt can be found in Out of the Shadows of Angkor. Photo courtesy of Christophe Macquet.

UHP: What are some highlights of the issue? What should readers not miss?

Editors: The foreword by Vaddey Ratner and a special preface on Cambodian American writers by Sokunthary Svay set the tone for the book. Indradevi’s “In Praise of Sister Queens,” one of the oldest known works by a female author in Southeast Asia, and Brah Rajasambhar’s sixteenth-century poem, “My Soul of Gold,” long thought lost, anchor the classical section. Khun Srun’s “A Small Request” as well as excerpts from his novel The Accused cement his reputation as one of most insightful writers from the 1960s and ‘70s. Extracts from works by Nou Hach, Soth Polin, and Ty Chi Huot showcase the treasures of modern Khmer fiction. Poets ranging from Chey Chap and Pich Tum Kravel in Cambodia to Prince Amrindo Sisowath and Khau Ny Kim in France are also featured. Diasporic voices shine throughout: Maria Hach’s brilliant essay, “An Archive of Haunting,” especially in conversation with pieces by Boreth Ly and Elizabeth Chey, reveals powerful connections linking war, memory, and the arts. In the closing section on performance, the genius of Kong Nay, the country’s most famous living bard, comes to life through an extended interview as well as his bawdy lullaby, “An Elephant Rocks Its Trunk.” Throughout the issue, don’t miss the stunning paintings of Theanly Chov from his Surviving series, which capture the future-forward dreams of many Cambodians today. 

Kong Nay, Cambodia's most famous living bard, playing the chapei dang veng, a traditional Cambodian long-necked lute in his home in 2008.   Photo courtesy of: Sharon May
Kong Nay, Cambodia’s most famous living bard, playing the chapei dang veng, a traditional Cambodian long-necked lute in his home in 2008. Photo courtesy of Sharon May.

UHP: Is there anything else that you’d like to share?

In addition to classical Cambodian literature that has never before been translated into English, this book presents writing that was nearly lost during Cambodia’s civil war, the Khmer Rouge regime, and its aftermath. When Sharon first began work on the previous volume, In the Shadow of Angkor, an American journalist told her, “Cambodians can’t write.” We hope that this new volume, Out of the Shadows of Angkor, shows that they most certainly can, and have done so for centuries with humor, wisdom, beauty, and depth.

_________________________________________________________

Trent Walker is a postdoctoral fellow of the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University and a specialist in the manuscripts and chanting practices of mainland Southeast Asia. 

Sharon May worked for Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Human Rights—living and working in Cambodia while researching the Khmer Rouge regime—and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University.

Out of the Shadows of Angkor: Cambodian Poetry
MĀNOA Double Issue Vol. 33 Issue 2 and Vol. 34 Issue 1 (2022)

Out of the Shadows of Angkor

Read free on Project MUSE:

On Cambodian American Writers

by Sokunthary Svay

A Small Request

by Khun Srun, Christophe Macquet, Sharon May

Subscribe to MĀNOA

All MĀNOA subscribers will receive the issue, Out of the Shadows of Angkor, upon print publication in September 2022 and an additional volume on Burmese literature in Winter 2022. A one-year, individual subscription costs $35.

Order Out of the Shadows of Angkor

Order your copy on Amazon for $25. Shipping begins in September 2022. 

New Journal Issues: “Contagious Magic” in Japanese Theatre, Logistics of the Natural History Trade, Hawai‘i’s Toxic Plants + More

 

Recognizing Black History Month with Free Journal Content in February

In recognition of Black History Month, we offer the following journals, articles, and reviews. We invite you to explore and enjoy the following journal content online free through February 2022.

Journals Issues:

cover image 41-4

biography: an interdisciplinary quarterly

Volume 41, Number 4 (Fall 2018)

Special Issue: M4BL and the Critical Matter of Black Lives

Introduction by Guest Editors Britney Cooper and Treva B. Lindsey:

Understanding the stories presented in this special issue as simultaneously about violence, resistance, (in)justice, and freedom, we center interrogations and representations of individual and collective Black lives to unearth both the possibilities and potential challenges for those living and fighting in the era of the Movement for Black Lives. In our call for papers, we offered these questions: What does “life” mean in the context of M4BL? What is the fundamental
meaning of “lives” when centering those on the margins? Each of these pieces directly and indirectly responds to these questions. As editors, we continually converse about the distinction between Black lives and Black life, while always connecting through our unwavering commitment to both.

Find more research articles and reviews at Project MUSE.

biography: an interdisciplinary quarterly

Volume 36, Issue 3 (Summer 2013)

Special Issue: “He the One We All Knew”

Guest Contributor Njoroge Njoroge reflects on this issues dedication on the life and thought of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz known to most of Malcolm X. In reference to the compilation of articles in this issue Njoroge explains:

This cluster of essays is another re-discovery of Malcolm, one that attempts to give context and feeling to the life, world, words, and works of Malcolm. The collection is a modest contribution to the ongoing discussion, reevaluation, and interpretation of the life and political thought of Malcolm X. By examining the man and his times, in light of old wisdom and new scholarship, we can come to a better appreciation of Malcolm, the man and the myth. Each of the authors presents us with different “Malcolms”: He the one we all knew.

Find more research articles and reviews at Project MUSE.

Journal Articles:

biography: an interdisciplinary quarterly

Black Biography in the Service of a Revolution: Martin R. Delany in Afro-American Historiography
By Tunde Adeleke
Volume 17, Number 3, Summer 1994

African American Pioneers in Anthropology (review)
By B. C. Harrison
Volume 23, Number 2, Spring 2000

Biography and the Political Unconscious: Ellison, Toomer, Jameson, and the Politics of Symptomatic Reading
By Barbara Foley
Volume 36, Number 4, Fall 2013

Digression, Slavery, and Failing to Return in the Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke
By Michael A. Chaney
Volume 39, Number 4, Fall 2016

Obituarizing Black Maleness, Obituarizing Prince
By Steven W. Thrasher
Volume 41, Number 1, Winter 2018

Call My Name: Using Biographical Storytelling to Reconceptualize the History of African Americans at Clemson University
By Rhondda Robinson Thomas
Volume 42, Number 3, Summer 2019

Buddhist-Christian Studies: Official Journal of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies

The Practice of Double Belonging and Afro-Buddhist Identity in Jan Willis’s Dreaming Me
By, Carolyn Medine
Volume 40, 2020

Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom ed. by Pamela Ayo Yetunde and Cheryl Giles, and: Buddhist-Christian Dialogue, U.S. Law, and Womanist Theology for Transgender Spiritual Care by Pamela Ayo Yetunde (review)
By Carolyn Jones Medine
Volume 41, 2021

Journal of World History: Official Journal of the World History Association

Coloring Universal History: Robert Benjamin Lewis’s Light and Truth (1843) and William Wells Brown’s The Black Man (1863)
By Marnie Hughes-Warrington
Volume 20, Number 1, March 2009

Jazz and the Evolution of Black American Cosmopolitanism in Interwar Paris
By Rachel Gillett
Volume 21, Number 3, September 2010

“Town of God”: Ota Benga, the Batetela Boys, and the Promise of Black America
By Karen Sotiropoulos
Volume 26, Number 1, March 2015

MĀNOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing 

Six Poems from Harlem Shadows
By Claude McKay
Volume 31, Number 2, (2019)

whatdoesfreemean?
By Catherine Filloux
Volume 32, Number 1 (2020)

Passing the Fire
By Wayne Karlin
Volume 32, Number 1 (2020)

I Investigate Lynchings
Walter White
Volume 32, Number 1 (2020)

Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers

The Black Settlers on Saltspring Island, Canada, in the Nineteenth Century
By Charles C. Irby
Volume 36, 1974

January is Kalaupapa Month

Published twice a year since 1989 by the University of Hawaiʻi Press, Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing has two issues of special interest to readers this month, which has been designated Kalaupapa Month by the Hawaiʻi state government and celebrates two important figures. Father Damien, the Belgian priest who cared for victims of leprosy at Kalaupapa, Molokaʻi, was born on the 3rd, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was born on the 15th.


Mānoa vol. 23 no. 2 (2011) Almost Heaven

Almost Heaven: On the Human and Divine (winter 2011) presents Aldyth Morris’s play Damien in its entirety, plus a set of images reproduced from glass-plate negatives made at Kalaupapa in the early twentieth century. The images are from the collection of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts United States Province. Morris was a Hawaiʻi playwright who received the Hawaiʻi Award for Literature in 1978 and worked for many years at UH Press.


Mānoa vol. 32 no. 1 (2020) Tyranny Lessons

Tyranny Lessons: International Prose, Poetry, and Performance (summer 2020) features photographs from the 1960s by Danny Lyon from his book Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. Lyon was the first photographer of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and was jailed alongside Martin Luther King Jr. Working next to activists such as Julian Bond and Howard Zinn, he captured sit-ins, church bombings, speeches by John Lewis and other leaders, and the arrest and jailing of protestors.

Members of the UH community can view these works for free at Project Muse.


Links:
• Star-Advertiser article on Kalaupapa Month https://www.staradvertiser.com/2022/01/07/hawaii-news/
in-january-kalaupapa-month-hawaiians-reclaim-loved-ones/

• Mānoa website https://manoa.hawaii.edu/manoajournal/
• Almost Heaven https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/25083
• Tyranny Lessons https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/42693

The Zither: A Novella and New Short Stories from China (Mānoa, Vol. 33 Issue 1)

Featured in this Mānoa volume is The Woman Zou, the third in a series of novellas by the distinguished woman writer Zhang Yihe. Born in 1942 in Chongqing, Sichuan, Zhang Yihe was the daughter of Zhang Bojun, a high official in the Chinese Communist Party who was purged in 1957 and labeled a public enemy. By association, Zhang Yihe was convicted of counterrevolutionary activities and sentenced to twenty years in a remote prison camp. After serving ten years, she was released and allowed to return to Beijing in 1979. When she retired in 2001 from teaching at the Chinese National Opera Academy, she began writing her novellas based on the lives of her fellow women prisoners. Her nonfiction books were banned in China and she became an outspoken critic of China’s censorship laws. In 2004, she received the International PEN Award for Independent Chinese Writing. The award committee wrote that

Zhang Yihe’s writing is not only an indictment of the age of darkness, but it is also an affirmation of the indefatigable human dignity and a negation of all attempts to destroy this dignity… Zhang Yihe’s work illustrates the rarely seen courage among contemporary Chinese writers to defend freedom, dignity and historical memories.

The other outstanding writers in this volume are Yi Zhou, whose writing awards include the first prize for novellas and short stories in the Yellow River Literature competition, the Dunhuang Literary Award, and the Lu Xun literary prize, and Zhu Wenying, who is considered one of the leading representatives of post-70s women writers and has received the Annual People’s Literature Prize, among other awards.

The Zither was translated and guest edited by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping. 

More News from Mānoa

Manoa MA 32-2 Acting My Age Cover Thomas Farber

“An Office in the Ocean”: An interview with author Thomas Farber at The Hawai‘i Review of Books

Podcast: Michael Ellsberg interviews author Thomas Farber

The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project: Leland Cheuk interviews author Thomas Farber

A letter from author Thomas Farber to Mānoa journal

Two Mānoa pieces are included in the new Pushcart anthology, including Xiao Xiao’s “Crime against Grief: Myth of an Age” (translated by Ming Di and Frank Stewart) and Tang Donhong’s essay, “Chairman Mao is Dead!” (translated by Anne Henochowicz). Both are included in the Mānoa volume, Tyranny Lessons.

The Zither: A Novella and New Short Stories from China
MĀNOA Vol. 33 Issue 1 (2021)

Read on Project MUSE:

The Zither

Subscribe to MĀNOA

Like The Zither? MĀNOA publishes two compelling issues annually of international literature. Subscribe here

Celebrating Barry Lopez: Special Print Bundle Sale + Free Digital Special Issue

Barry Lopez passed away on Christmas Day 2020 at age seventy-five. He was celebrated and admired as a writer of fiction, nonfiction, essays, and memoir.

Barry was an ardent friend of MĀNOA. In addition to giving MĀNOA stories and essays, he co-edited two important international issues: Maps of Reconciliation: Literature and the Ethical Imagination in 2007, and its companion issue, Gates of Reconciliation, in 2008.

To celebrate Barry’s life and work, we offer 5 print titles for $30 (or $10 each) and also a selection of his work free via the Project MUSE platform.

Special Print Bundle Sale

The 5 MĀNOA titles (pictured, right) featuring Barry Lopez’s work as writer and editor are now available for $30 (or $10 per title) through the end of February 2021.

Buy the Special Print Bundle Now.

Free Digital Special Issue

Read Now: Remembering Barry Lopez (1945-2020): Stories and Essays in MĀNOA

To celebrate his work and in gratitude for his life, friendship, and support, we offer this selection of work by Barry Lopez that appeared in MĀNOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing.

These articles will be free on Project MUSE through May 2021.

Introduction: Barry Lopez (1945-2020) (Open Access)

Editors’ Note
Originally published: Volume 19, Number 2, 2007

The Leadership Imperative: An Interview with Oren Lyons
Originally published: Volume 19, Number 2, 2007

¡Nunca Más!
Originally published: Volume 20, Number 1, 2008

Epilogue
Originally published: Volume 20, Number 1, 2008

The Letters of Heaven
Originally published: Volume 23, Number 2, 2011

In the Great Bend of the Souris River
Originally published: Volume 25, Issue 1, 2013

Print Bundle Sale

Titles included in bundle.

9780824832681
Cascadia: The Life and Breath of the World
Almost Heaven: On the Human and Divine
9780824833206
Wild Hearts: Literature

Buy Special Bundle Now

Acting My Age: Thomas Farber’s new book from MĀNOA

Thomas Farber, 2020. Photograph by Andrea Young
Thomas Farber, 2020. Photograph by Andrea Young

Elegant, exuberant, and idiosyncratic, Acting My Age is a memoir and meditation by one of America’s most playful and inventive writers.

Acting My Age is the newest volume from MĀNOA. In the words of Mary Mackey (The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams), “in Acting My Age, Thomas Farber gives us an unflinching, luminous, cleverly conceived meditation on his own mortality as well as on the extinction of the coral reefs, snow leopards, dolphins, and, ultimately the human species. Couching his observations in a series of short, interconnected, almost-epigrammatic essays that read like prose poems, Farber creates a narrative style reminiscent of Joyce and Melville: oceanic in depth and all-encompassing in range.”

Below, Thomas Farber shares how this book came together, water friendships, and how he’s faring a year into the COVID-19 pandemic. 


University of Hawai‘i Press: You describe Acting My Age as an “interim report.” When and where did Acting My Age begin?

Thomas Farber: I’d finished Here and Gone in early 2015. The concluding chapter of its third person nonfiction has “the writer” confronting open heart surgery in seven days. Acting My Age picks up, in the first person, where that left off.

UHP: You sign your author’s note that opens Acting My Age from both Berkeley and Honolulu. Tell us about your relationship to these places.

TF: Born and raised in Boston, I first came to Berkeley in 1964 at age twenty. I’ve been based there most of the time since, albeit with long absences, and have taught at the University of California, Berkeley since the mid-1990s.

I first came to Hawai‘i in 1971, have had long stays every year since, often for half the year. Surfing and Pacific Island post-colonial writing have been two of my persistent interests. I’ve been visiting writer at the University of Hawai‘i, Manoa; visiting fellow at the East-West Center; and have traveled extensively in the South Pacific.

Gill net pyramid,   Keauhou Bay, Hawai‘i, 2009. Photograph by Wayne Levin
Gill net pyramid, Keauhou Bay, Hawai‘i, 2009. Photograph by Wayne Levin

UHP: How do you feel Wayne Levin and Geoffrey Fricker’s photography complements your work?

TF: Water friendships! I first saw Wayne’s marvelous ocean photographs when I was dreaming toward the book that became On Water (1994). My collaborations with Wayne include Through A Liquid MirrorOther Oceans (UH Press), and Akule. As for freshwater, I’d been part of a Geoff Fricker project about the upper Sacramento River. Then in the late 1990s Geoff asked me write text for his haunting photographs of the ruined Hamakuapoko sugar mill.

Sugar water-cooling system, Pu‘unēnē, Maui, 1997. Photograph by Geoffrey Fricker
Sugar water-cooling system, Pu‘unēnē, Maui, 1997. Photograph by Geoffrey Fricker

UHP: As the author of more than 25 books, how does Acting My Age differ from your other work?

TF: A return to first person nonfiction, something I’d not done for many years, it picks up after the impending heart surgery looming at the end of Here and GoneActing My Age is, not surprisingly, much concerned with aging and mortality—author seventy-one to seventy-five in the telling—but also speaks from my ongoing love of and fear for the ocean. My dismay with the mess humans can make of things. As for how the stories are told, well, I’ve had a long love affair with words, tried to draw on all I’ve learned in my writing life.

UHP: The revisions for Acting My Age were completed in the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic. How does this find you—and your writing—nearly a year later?

TF: Like everyone, I’m much sobered by the pandemic. Too many apprehensions realized.

Meanwhile, no one writes or lives forever. About to turn seventy-seven, clearing books and papers from my garage library, I feel like a surfer in a long lull. Waiting for the next set. Staying very close to home, perforce, has encouraged me to be the kind of reader I was as a child—(re)reading for the deep pleasure of it. No product quite yet in mind. Savoring company I’ve kept. Jim Harrison’s late poems, Dead Man’s Float. J.A. Baker’s The Peregrine.  Calvino’s Invisible Cities. These “colleagues” I’ve learned from, have tried to measure up to.


THOMAS FARBER has been a Fulbright Scholar, awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and three times National Endowment fellowships for fiction and creative nonfiction, recipient of the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize, and Rockefeller Foundation scholar at Bellagio. His recent books include Here and Gone, The End of My Wits, Brief Nudity, and The Beholder. Former visiting writer at Swarthmore College and the University of Hawai‘i, he teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. www.thomasfarber.org

Manoa MA 32-2 Acting My Age Cover Thomas Farber
MĀNOA Vol. 32 Issue 2 (2020)

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