The Logic of Pacific Island Culture

Why are islanders so lavishly generous with food and material possessions but so guarded with information? Why do these people, unfailingly polite for the most part, laugh openly when others embarrass themselves? What does a smile mean to an islander? What might a sudden lapse into silence signify? These questions are common in encounters with an unfamiliar Pacific Island culture. Making Sense of Micronesia: The Logic of Pacific Island Culture, by Francis X. Hezel, S.J., is intended for westerners who find themselves in contact with Micronesians—as teachers, social workers, health-care providers, or simply as friends—and are puzzled by their island ways. It is for anyone struggling to make sense of cultural exchanges they don’t quite understand.

The author focuses on the guts of island culture: the importance of the social map, the tension between the individual and social identity, the ways in which wealth and knowledge are used, the huge importance of respect, emotional expression and its restraints, island ways of handling both conflict and intimacy, the real but indirect power of women. Far from a theoretical exposition, the book begins and ends with the real-life behavior of islanders. Each section of every chapter is introduced by a vignette that illustrates the theme discussed. The book attempts to explain island behavior, as curious as it may seem to outsiders at times, against the over-riding pattern of values and attitudes that have always guided island life.

April 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3661-0 / $27.00 (CLOTH)

Albert Wendt Receives New Zealand’s Highest Literary Award

Yesterday Albert Wendt (shown with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key) was presented with this year’s Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement for Fiction in Wellington. The Samoan-born writer’s previous awards include the Wattie Book of the Year, the Montana Book Award, and two Commonwealth Book Prizes. He is acknowledged as one of the Pacific’s major novelists and poets and an important influence in the development of indigenous writing around the world.

Wendt is the author or editor of numerous books published by University of Hawai‘i Press, including Leaves of the Banyan Tree, Pouliuli, The Adventures of Vela, Sons for the Return Home, Black Rainbow, and Ola. His most recent book, Ancestry, is published by Huia Publishers and will be distributed in the U.S. and Canada by UH Press later this year.

Moving Images Wins Award from the Society for Visual Anthropology

Moving Images: John Layard, Fieldwork, and Photography on Malakula since 1914, by Haidy Geismar and Anita Herle, is the most recent recipient of the John Collier Jr., Award for Still Photography from the Society for Visual Anthropology. The award is made periodically for work that exemplifies the use of still photography, both historical and contemporary, for research and communication of anthropological knowledge, and for excellence in visual anthropology.

The Collier Committee members were impressed with the authors’ contribution:

“and in particular with the presentation of unpublished archival materials, John Layard’s story, and historical photos supplemented with his contextual field notes integrated in such an engaging format with contemporary visual research and literature, essays, text, and the reintroduction of historical and contemporary photos into the culture today.”

The official presentation of the award was made last week during the 2012 American Anthropology Association annual meeting in San Francisco.

New Book Addresses Sovereignty Issues around the Globe

Unparalleled in its breadth and scope, Sovereignty: Frontiers of Possibility, edited by Julie Evans, Ann Genovese, Alexander Reilly, and and Patrick Wolfe, brings together some of the freshest and most original writing on sovereignty being done today. Sovereignty’s many dimensions are approached from multiple perspectives and experiences. It is viewed globally as an international question; locally as an issue contested between Natives and settlers; and individually as survival in everyday life. Through all this diversity and across the many different national contexts from which the contributors write, the chapters in this collection address each other, staging a running conversation that truly internationalizes this most fundamental of political issues.

November 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3563-7 / $45.00 (CLOTH)

A Comprehensive Treatment of the Hawaiian Palm

The only native palms in Hawai‘i, loulu are among the Islands’ most distinctive plants. Several of the 24 recognized species are rare and endangered and all make handsome and appropriate ornamentals to adorn gardens and landscapes with their dramatic foliage, colorful flower clusters, and conspicuous fruits. In Loulu: The Hawaiian Palm, Donald R. Hodel shares his expertise on loulu, having traveled extensively throughout Hawai‘i to research and photograph nearly all the species in their native habitat. In the course of his work, he described and named three loulu that were new to science.

“I am very enthusiastic about this book. It is a loving tribute to some very threatened, very beautiful palms. They are an irreplaceable part of Hawai‘i’s natural history and patrimony. I hope this book brings the plight of these precious palms to the attention of the world.” —Scott Zona, Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University

November 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3567-5 / $48.00 (CLOTH)

New Catalog Available: Hawaii and the Pacific 2013

The UH Press Hawai‘i and the Pacific 2013 catalog is now available! To view the 3.5M PDF, click on the catalog cover image to the left.

Highlights include:

*A revised and expanded edition of a popular guide to East O‘ahu’s spectacular nature preserve (Exploring Hanauma Bay: Revised and Expanded Edition)

* An updated classic of Chinese cookery (Mary Sia’s Classic Chinese Cookbook)

* A book of sensible, practical, and doable suggestions about how to work on your life from the founder of Constructive Living (Water, Snow, Water: Constructive Living for Mental Health)

* A fully illustrated guide to Hawai‘i’s Japanese Buddhist temples (Japanese Buddhist Temples in Hawai‘i)

* A look at ecological restoration—the science and art of assisting the recovery of degraded species and ecosystems—in current attempts to preserve Hawai‘i’s native fauna and flora (Restoring Paradise: Rethinking and Rebuilding Nature in Hawai‘i)

* A collection of some of freshest and most original writing on sovereignty being done today (Sovereignty: Frontiers of Possibility)

* A book for westerners puzzled by Micronesian ways—and others struggling to make sense of cultural exchanges they don’t quite understand (Making Sense of Micronesia: The Logic of Pacific Island Culture)

* Hawai‘i author Gary Pak explores the social and psychological turmoil experienced by Korean Americans during and after the Korean War (Brothers under the Same Sky)

Flash Sale – 4 Days Only

To celebrate the canonization of Mother Marianne Cope on October 21, we are offering these titles at 40% off at our website from Friday, October 19 (noon HST) to Monday, October 22 (noon HST):

Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory, by Anwei Skinsnes Law: Combining more than 200 hours of interviews with archival documents, including over 300 letters and petitions written by the earliest residents translated from Hawaiian, this monumental work presents at long last the story of Kalaupapa as told by its people. 40% off: $29.40 (cloth); $17.39 (paper)

Almost Heaven: On the Human and Divine, edited by Frank Stewart: This issue of Manoa journal includes the complete play Damien, by Aldyth Morris, and images made at Kalaupapa, Moloka‘i, in the early twentieth century from the collection of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts United States Province. 40% off: $12.00 (paper)

Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai, by Gavan Daws: “May be the best biography of Damien yet written.” —Library Journal 40% off: $11.39 (paper)

Molokai, by O. A. Bushnell: “Searches the hearts of the doomed and damned with an intense compassion. The author has painted the background of his novel with a knowing brush. . . . A vivid experience for the reader.” —New York Times Book Review 40% off: $14.99 (paper)

Leper Priest of Molokai: The Father Damien Story, by Richard Stewart: “Rather than portraying his subject as a plaster saint, Stewart provides a full-bodied portrait of an inspirational, yet admittedly flawed, human being.” —Booklist 40% off: $17.99 (paper)

Anwei Skinsnes Law, author of “Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory,” attended Saint Marianne’s canonization at the Vatican on October 21, 2012.

New in the Writing Past Colonialism Series

Papua New Guinea is going through a crisis: A concentration on conventional approaches to development, including an unsustainable reliance on mining, forestry, and foreign aid, has contributed to the country’s slow decline since independence in 1975. Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development: Other Paths for Papua New Guinea, by Paul James, Yaso Nadarajah, Karen Haive, and Victoria Stead, attempts to address problems and gaps in the literature on development and develop a new qualitative conception of community sustainability informed by substantial and innovative research in Papua New Guinea.

“Sustainable Communities is an excellent work; remarkable. It manages to combine a sense of the complexity of its subject while remaining highly readable. I found it deeply probing, sustaining a sense of complexity across a multitude of terrains. Importantly, the book displays a belief in the possibilities of the village and displaced communities while retaining a sense of relevant problems.” —Dr. Nonie Sharo, author of Stars of Tagai: The Torres Strait Islanders

Writing Past Colonialism
July 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3640-5 / $27.00 (PAPER)

UH Press Around the Web

Jim Tranquada, co-author of this month’s The ‘Ukulele: A History, had a few things to say about Kevin Roderick’s post “In praise of Hawaii’s ukulele (via Portugal)” in LA Observed. Read Tranquada’s comments in Roderick’s follow-up post here. In his response, Tranquada specifically mentions errors in The Daily’s recent “Uke Can Do It Too.” Read The ‘Ukulele to get the real story!

Aborigial Art & Culture: An American Eye calls Minoru Hokari’s Gurindji Journey: A Japanese Historian in the Outback, a “wonderful, iconoclastic study.” Reviewer Will Owen recalls Hokari’s discussion of a Gurindji historical event, John F. Kennedy’s visit to Wave Hill Station in 1966, three years after Kennedy’s assassination: “[This] was better than picking up the latest Swedish crime thriller: I had to keep reading until I understood how Hokari was going to resolve this problem.” Owen concludes his review with:

“In writing this short review of Gurindji Journey, I have used the entertaining and perplexing instance of President Kennedy’s visit to Wave Hill to organize some aspects of Hokari’s story telling and analysis. In doing so, I have not done justice to the complexity and subtlety of his arguments, nor the richness of his immersion in Gurindji culture. But I hope that what I have written will entice you to pick up this unlikely entry in the literature of Indigenous studies written by a Japanese historian in the Outback.”

A History of the Ukulele

Since its introduction to Hawai‘i in 1879, the ‘ukulele has been many things: a symbol of an island paradise; a tool of political protest; an instrument central to a rich musical culture; a musical joke; a highly sought-after collectible; a cheap airport souvenir; a lucrative industry; and the product of a remarkable synthesis of western and Pacific cultures. The ‘Ukulele: A History, by Jim Tranquada and John King, explores all of these facets, placing the instrument for the first time in a broad historical, cultural, and musical context.

“Here, at last, is the complete story of the ‘ukulele. Thanks to the authors’ years of tireless research, the instrument’s incredible journey is brought vividly to life. This book is a labor of love and a gift of enduring scholarship.” —Jim Beloff, author of The ‘Ukulele: A Visual History

May 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3634-4 / $20.99 (PAPER)