An Innovative Approach to the History of Colonialism

Giving voice to the women who worked as maids—known as “house-girls” in the Pacific islands of Vanuatu—is the goal of House-Girls Remember: Domestic Workers in Vanuatu, edited by Margaret Rodman, Daniela Kraemer, Lissant Bolton, and Jean Tarisesei. This innovative work is a unique collaborative project with contributions from twenty-one indigenous and four expatriate women. Although women’s history is a popular topic globally, Pacific island women have had few opportunities to conduct research and publish in this field. House-Girls Remember is contextualized within literature on domestic workers and current anthropological theory, but the focus is on the words of the indigenous women themselves.

June 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3012-0 / $45.00 (CLOTH)

Houses Far from Home: British Colonial Space in the New Hebredies, by Margaret Rodman, and Unfolding the Moon: Enacting Women’s Kastom in Vanuatu, by Lissant Bolton, are both available from University of Hawai‘i Press.

Crisis in North Korea Now in Paperback

Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956, by Andrei Lankov, is now available in paperback.

Hawai‘i Studies on Korea series, published in association with the Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai‘i
May 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3207-0 / $21.00 (PAPER)

“In this important new book, the Russian-trained scholar Andrei Lankov examines the critical historical period, the mid-1950s, when the shape of the North Korean political system was formed. This book is important for two reasons—because it is the first thorough discussion of the events leading up to the effective removal of any opposition to the Kim Il Sung group, and because it uses sources which until recently were not readily accessible. . . . These sources give us a far better historical and chronological understanding of the events and players during this crucial period than we could have had before. . . . This well-written book will be of value beyond the area of Korean Studies to anyone interested in the history of communism and political systems, as well as the history of current affairs.” —Asian Affairs

Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics

Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics: Studies in Literature and Visual Culture, by Sheldon H. Lu, is an ambitious multimedia and interdisciplinary study of Chinese modernity in the context of globalization from the late nineteenth century to the present. Lu draws on Chinese literature, film, art, photography, and video to broadly map the emergence of modern China in relation to the capitalist world-system in the economic, social, and political realms. Central to his study is the investigation of biopower and body politics, namely, the experience of globalization on a personal level.

May 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3177-6 / $22.00 (PAPER)

Sheldon H. Lu is the editor of Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics (with Emily Yueh-yu Yeh) and Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender, both published by University of Hawai‘i Press.

Broken Trust, Varua Tupu Win Awards

University of Hawai‘i Press titles were among the winners at the 2007 Ka Palapala Po‘okela book awards ceremony, held on May 18, 2007. The awards are presented by the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association to recognize the finest books published during the previous year.

Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement, and Political Manipulation at America’s Largest Charitable Trust, by Samuel P. King and Randall W. Roth, was awarded the coveted Samuel M. Kamakau Award for Hawai‘i Book of the Year, as well as the certificate award in the nonfiction category and an honorable mention in Hawaiian Culture. This best-selling book by a federal judge and a UH law professor recounts the background and dramatic events surrounding the ouster of Bishop Estate trustees in the 1990s. According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (July 4, 2006), Broken Trust belongs at “the top of Hawaii’s must-read list.”

Varua Tupu: New Writing from French Polynesia, edited by Frank Stewart, Kareva Mateata-Allain, and Alexander Dale Mawyer, received the Excellence in Literature Award. The first anthology of its kind, Varua Tupu offers English-speaking readers the stories, memoirs, poetry, photography, and paintings of a French Polynesian artistic community that has been growing in strength since the 1960s.

Waikiki: A History of Forgetting & Remembering, by Gaye Chan and Andrea Feeser, received an honorable mention in Excellence in Design.

Also honored were UH Press author Caren Loebel-Fried and Iz: The Voice of the People (Bess Press) and The Seven Orchids (Bamboo Ridge Press), both distributed outside of Hawai‘i by University of Hawai‘i Press.

Significant University Press Titles for Undergraduates

In the May 2007 issue of the American Library Association’s Choice magazine, the premier source for reviews of academic books of interest to those in higher education, three recently published University of Hawai‘i Press titles are included in a list of “most significant university press titles for undergraduates”:

Displacing Desire: Travel and Popular Culture in China, by Beth E. Notar (now available in paperback)

Japanese Popular Prints: From Votive Slips to Playing Cards, by Rebecca Salter

Sherlock in Shanghai: Stories of Crime and Detection by Cheng Xiaoqing, translated by Timothy C. Wong

If you are an instructor interested in adopting these or other University of Hawai‘i Press books for classroom use, you may request an examination copy. For more information, please click here.

The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha Now in Paperback

The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha: Monastic Warriors and Sohei in Japanese History, by Mikael S. Adolphson, is now available in paperback.

May 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3123-3 / $24.00 (PAPER)

“Mikael Adolphson has presented the first cogent explanation of the role of violence in Japanese monasteries, interrogating the much-misunderstood role of the so-called warrior monks. Based on a wide and deep knowledge of primary sources, Adolphson has both advanced the scholarly understanding of the broader configurations of the samurai and has also done a fine job of dispelling many myths that persist in Japanese and Western popular culture. This is our first true picture of the various types of men who wielded arms on behalf of religious institutions—few of whom were actually monks.” —G. Cameron Hurst, University of Pennsylvania

Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures

Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures, by Elizabeth DeLoughrey, is the first comparative study of Caribbean and Pacific Island literatures and the first work to bring indigenous and diaspora literary studies together in a sustained dialogue. Taking the “tidalectic” between land and sea as a dynamic starting point, Elizabeth DeLoughrey foregrounds geography and history in her exploration of how island writers inscribe the complex relation between routes and roots.

“Elizabeth DeLoughrey invokes the cyclical model of the continual movement and rhythm of the ocean (‘tidalectics’) to destabilize the national, ethnic, and even regional frameworks that have been the mainstays of literary study. The result is a privileging of alter/native epistemologies whereby island cultures are positioned where they should have been all along—at the forefront of the world historical process of transoceanic migration and landfall. The research, determination, and intellectual dexterity that infuse this nuanced and meticulous reading of Pacific and Caribbean literature invigorate and deepen our interest in and appreciation of island literature.” —Vilsoni Hereniko, University of Hawai‘i

May 2007 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3122-6 / $29.00 (PAPER)

Kneubuhl Receives the Cades Award for Literature

Playwright Victoria Kneubuhl, the author of Hawai‘i Nei: Island Plays, is the most recent recipient of the Elliot Cades Award for Literature, presented annually by the Hawai‘i Literary Arts Council. Kneubuhl’s first mystery novel, The Portrait Murders, will be published by University of Hawai‘i Press in 2008. She will be reading from her work at this month’s Hawai‘i Books and Music Festival.

Kneubuhl’s family boasts several accomplished writers, including her uncle, John, the author of Think of a Garden and Other Plays, published by University of Hawai‘i Press, and Lemanatele Mark Kneubuhl, the author of The Smell of the Moon, distributed in North America by University of Hawai‘i Press and published by New Zealand’s Huia Publishers.

The Casebook of Old Edo’s Sherlock Holmes Reviewed

Tom Baker in the April 21, 2007 edition of The Daily Yomiuri had this to say about Okamoto Kido’s The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi: Detective Stories of Old Edo, recently published by University of Hawai‘i Press:

“An entertaining collection of detective stories. . . . The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi offers a special pleasure for readers familiar with the Tokyo area, where well-known place names appear on every page, but with startling different details.”

A contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author Okamoto Kido examines the seamy underside of life in Edo (Tokyo) through his fictional detective, the street-smart Hanshichi. Modeled after Doyle’s tales about his own Sherlock Holmes, these fourteen stories, translated by Ian MacDonald, offer entertaining insights into the development of the modern Japanese crime novel.

Read the full text of Tom Baker’s review here.

UH Press Authors at the Hawaii Book and Music Festival, May 19-20

More than a dozen University of Hawai‘i Press authors* will be presenters at the second annual Hawai‘i Book and Music Festival, a celebration of Island books and music to be held on May 19-20, 2007, on the grounds of Honolulu Hale (City Hall). The free weekend event will feature readings, panels, and performances (download a program schedule here) by more than 350 celebrated local, national, and international authors, crafters, and musicians.

To view books by UH Press authors at the event and our latest titles, please stop by the UH Press tent, located near the Hawaiian Pavilion along King Street. See you there!

*Victoria Kneubuhl, J. Arthur Rath, Leslie Hayashi, Caren Loebel-Fried, Albert Wendt, Frank Stewart, Marion Coste, Sue Cowing, Mike Markrich, Jon Osorio, Davianna McGregor, Maxine Hong Kingston, Samuel King, Randall Roth, Billy Bergin, Gaye Chan, Haunani-Kay Trask, Mark Panek.