In this collection of poetry, prose, and personal essay, both new and well-known women authors of mixed race ancestry examine history, culture, and identity using insight from the female psyche.
Featured are writings by Ai, Cristina Bacchilega, Kathy Dee Kaleokealoha Kaloloahilani Banggo, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Debra Kang Dean, Kiana Houghtailing Davenport, Jessica Hagedorn, Kimiko Hahn, Velina Hasu Houston, Cathy Kanoelani Ikeda, Carolyn Lei-lanilau, Susan Miho Nunes, Sigrid Nunez, Mindy Eun Soo Pennybacker, Michelle Cruz Skinner, Cathy Song, Adrien Tien, Kathleen Tyau, and twenty-five other writers.
Editors | |
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ISBN | 910043595 |
ISBN-13 | 978-0910043595 |
Year Published | |
Number of Pages | 396 |
Weight | 20.8 oz |
Dimensions | 9 × 6 × 1 in |
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from The War Doll Hotel by Kiana Houghtailing Davenport
Here's a snapshot of me at thirteen, looking down at my mother's grave. In a year my father will desert me, too, going back to Alabama. I don't understand why he leaves me behind. Like him, I have his pale eyes. In other words, "I pass."
Here's a snapshot of me in summer, working my way through university. I'm standing on the assembly line at Dole packing plant in Honolulu, wearing a steely hairnet, ugly, pineapple rash climbing my arms, swearing to myself, <i>I'm getting out of these nowhere islands. I'm going to the mainland where I belong.</i> You see the trouble I was in. I didn't know who I was. I would lose a whole decade, all of my twenties, before I learned that recognizing who you are isn't the subtext of a life. It's the main point. The week I graduated from university, I boarded a flight for New York City, as far from Honolulu as I could get and still be in the United States.
from Hybrid by Susan Nunes
The old woman looked fondly at Naomi and spoke again. I caught the English word "purebred."
She was trying to describe, I now realize, what made the plant special. But something in the meeting of the word and the experience alienated me. I felt alone. Different. Not like them. For a long time I stared at the old woman's aged face, at the toothless mouth, the purple flesh, at the hands that gripped her granddaughter's shoulder, just as the roots clasped the clay pot.
That's all I remember of that day. I don't know what we did after that. It might have been any number of things, all lost. But I do know that in the weeks after that experience in the greenhouse that I decided to destroy the plant, to crush each flower, snap the fleshy stems and grind them into the cinder floor, pull from the pot the moss that held the plant and sustained it, and to rub away all traces of the white roots.
"We are trying to expand this idea of hapa apart from this imposed idea that we are either a bridge between cultures or are stuck between the cracks," said Keller in a separate interview.
The book contains more than 60 pieces -- personal essays, poems, short stories and excerpts from longer works -- by such writers as Jessica Hagedorn, Karla Brundage, Susan Miho Nunes, Kathleen Tyau, Kathy Song, Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu, Velina Hasu Houston, Cynthia Nakashima and Sabrena Taylor.
—Blood sisters - Honolulu Star-Bulletin