Hawaii Book and Music Festival 2008

University of Hawai‘i Press will be among the local publishers participating in this year’s Hawaii Book and Music Festival, to be held this weekend, May 17-18, 10 am-5 pm, at Honolulu Hale. Admission and parking are free to the general public.

UH Press authors Jon Van Dyke (Who Owns the Crown Lands of Hawai‘i), Davianna McGregor (Na Kua‘aina: Living Hawaiian Culture), Arthur Rath (Lost Generations: A Boy, a School, a Princess), Ben Finney (Vaka Moana, Voyages of the Ancestors: The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific), Stephanie Feeney (Sun and Rain: Exploring Seasons in Hawai‘i), and Jonathan Osorio (Dismembering Lahui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887) will be signing copies of their books at the Press tent (see schedule below):

Saturday, May 17, 11:00 am
Davianna McGregor, Jon Van Dyke

Sunday, May 18, 11:00 am
Arthur Rath

Sunday, May 18, 12:00 noon
Stephanie Feeney, Ben Finney

Sunday, May 18, 2:00 pm
Jonathan Osorio

Making Sense of AIDS in Melanesia

In Melanesia, rates of HIV infection are among the highest in the Pacific and increasing rapidly, with grave humanitarian, development, and political implications. There is a great need for social research on HIV/AIDS in the region to provide better insights into the sensitive issues surrounding HIV transmission. Making Sense of AIDS: Culture, Sexuality, and Power in Melanesia, edited by Leslie Butt and Richard Eves, is the first book on HIV and AIDS in the Pacific region. It gathers together stunning and original accounts of the often surprising ways that people make sense of the AIDS epidemic in various parts of Melanesia. The volume addresses substantive issues concerning AIDS and contemporary sexualities, relations of power, and moralities—themes that provide a powerful backdrop for twenty-first century understandings of the tensions between sexuality, religion, and politics in many parts of the world.

“This is a powerful and courageous anthology. One of its great strengths is the powerful ethnography of sexuality contained in many of these essays, making it extremely timely. It shows that anthropology is alive, that the work of culture in confronting the myriad terrors of an incurable disease is daunting and fearful but part of the human condition that needs reporting in these societies. The essays are original and in some cases truly unique. Making Sense of AIDS contains extremely valuable, interesting, and important contributions.” —Gilbert Herdt, Center for Human Sexuality Studies, San Francisco State University

May 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3249-0 / $27.00 (PAPER)

Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China

Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China, by Grace S. Fong, addresses the critical question of how to approach the study of women’s writing. It explores various methods of engaging in a meaningful way with a rich corpus of poetry and prose written by women of the late Ming and Qing periods, much of it rediscovered by the author in rare book collections in China and the United States. The volume treats different genres of writing and includes translations of texts that are made available for the first time in English. Among the works considered are the life-long poetic record of Gan Lirou, the lyrical travel journal kept by Wang Fengxian, and the erotic poetry of the concubine Shen Cai.

“Grace Fong has written a wonderful history of female writers’ participation in the elite conventions of Chinese poetics. Fong’s recovery of many of these poets, her able exegesis and elegant, analytical grasp of what the poets were doing is a great read, and her bilingual presentation of their poetry gives the book additional power. This is a persuasive and elegant study.” —Tani Barlow, author of The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism

May 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3186-8 / $32.00 (PAPER)

An Anthology of Surf Writing

A thousand years after Hawaiians first paddled long wooden boards into the ocean, modern surfers have continued this practice, which has recently been transformed into a global industry. Pacific Passages: An Anthology of Surf Writing, edited by Patrick Moser, brings together four centuries of writing about surfing, the most comprehensive collection of Polynesian and Western perspectives on the history and culture of a sport currently enjoyed by millions of people around the world. The stories begin with Hawaiian legends and chants and are followed by the journals of explorers; the travel narratives of missionaries and luminaries such as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Jack London; and the contemporary observations of Tom Wolfe, William Finnegan, Susan Orlean, and Bob Shacochis.

May 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3155-4 / $32.00 (PAPER)