Talking Hawaii’s Story Editors at Na Mea Hawaii

Based on oral history interviews conducted by the Center for Oral History at UH Mānoa, Talking Hawai‘i’s Story: Oral Histories of an Island People presents a rich sampling of the landmark work done by the Center, making accessible 29 first-person narratives that previously only appeared in the COH semiannual newsletter. The book’s three coeditors, Michi Kodama-Nishimoto, Warren S. Nishimoto, and Cynthia A. Oshiro will speak at Native Books/Nā Mea Hawai‘i in Ward Warehouse (phone: 596-8885) on Sunday, June 13, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. The free talk is open to the public and will be followed by a book signing and light refreshments. Books will be available for purchase.

The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Fiction and Film

Contemporary Chinese films are popular with audiences worldwide, but a key reason for their success has gone unnoticed: many of the films are adapted from brilliant literary works. Adapted for the Screen: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Fiction and Film, by Hsiu-Chuang Deppman, is the first to put these landmark films in the context of their literary origins and explore how the best Chinese directors adapt fictional narratives and styles for film. She unites aesthetics with history in her argument that the rise of cinema in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in the late 1980s was partly fueled by burgeoning literary movements. Fifth Generation director Zhang Yimou’s highly acclaimed films Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, and To Live are built on the experimental works of Mo Yan, Su Tong, and Yu Hua, respectively. Hong Kong new wave’s Ann Hui and Stanley Kwan capitalized on the irresistible visual metaphors of Eileen Chang’s postrealism. Hou Xiaoxian’s new Taiwan cinema turned to fiction by Huang Chunming and Zhu Tianwen for fine-grained perspectives on class and gender relations. Delving equally into the individual approaches of directors and writers, Deppman initiates readers into the exciting possibilities emanating from the world of Chinese cinema.

“Hsiu-Chuang Deppman’s ambitious book investigates the complex associative and conceptual interaction between literature and film, arguing that in many cases, a structural connection underlies the relationship. Her work is a strong challenge to those who believe literature and film should always be regarded as completely separate and unrelated. Deppman’s fascinating chapter on the hip Wong Kar-wai and his debt to novelist Liu Yichang well illustrates the way in which directors can play with and play off of narrative structures, in the process setting up a provocative intersection.” –Wendy Larson, University of Oregon

May 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3454-8 / $27.00 (PAPER)

Chinese Writing and Calligraphy

Suitable for college and high school students and those learning on their own, Wendan Li’s Chinese Writing and Calligraphy is a fully illustrated coursebook that provides comprehensive instruction in the history and practical techniques of Chinese calligraphy. No previous knowledge of the language is required to follow the text or complete the lessons. The work covers three major areas: 1) descriptions of Chinese characters and their components, including stroke types, layout patterns, and indications of sound and meaning; 2) basic brush techniques; and 3) the social, cultural, historical, and philosophical underpinnings of Chinese calligraphy—all of which are crucial to understanding and appreciating this art form.

May 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3364-0 / $25.00 (PAPER)
A Latitude 20 Book

Understanding Chinese Tombs

No other civilization in the premodern world was more obsessed with constructing underground burial structures than China, where for at least five thousand years people devoted a great amount of wealth and labor to build tombs and furnish them with exquisite objects and images. For the most part, tombs have been mainly appreciated as “treasure troves,” the contents of which has allowed art historians to rewrite histories of individual art forms such as bronze, jade, sculpture, and painting. However, new trends in Chinese art history place the entire burial (rather than its individual components) at the center of observation and interpretation. Wu Hung’s The Art of the Yellow Springs: Understanding Chinese Tombs takes this to the next level by focusing on interpretive methods. It argues that to achieve a genuine understanding of Chinese tombs we need to reconsider a host of art historical concepts (including visuality, viewership, space, formal analysis, function, and context) and derive an analytical framework from the three most essential aspects of any manufactured work: spatiality, materiality, and temporality.

“Most informative and innovative. . . written in a lucid style that should appeal to both engaged and general readers. Wu Hung has again proven himself to be a ground-breaker of Chinese art history.” —David D. W. Wang, Harvard University

May 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3426-5 / $50.00 (CLOTH)

“One of the great Indian plays of the millennium”

One of the most significant plays of post-Independence India, Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug takes place on the last day of the Great Mahabharata War. The once-beautiful city of Hastinapur is burning, the battlefield beyond the walls is piled with corpses, and the few survivors huddle together in grief and rage, blaming the destruction on their adversaries, divine capriciousness—anyone or anything except their own moral choices. Andha Yug explores our capacity for moral action, reconciliation, and goodness in times of atrocity and reveals what happens when individuals succumb to the cruelty and cynicism of a blind, dispirited age.

“Andha Yug is one of the great Indian plays of the millennium, and in Alok Bhalla it has found an ideal translator. . . . A model in the fraught field of translation.” —Girish Karnad, playwright, Padma Bhushan and Jnanpith Laureate

“Bhalla’s fine translation is austere and rigorous, negotiating both the epic scale of the play and the Spartan simplicity of its poetry.” —Keki N. Daruwalla, poet, Sahitya Akademi Laureate

May 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3517-0 / $20.00 (PAPER)
Manoa 22:1

New Catalog Available: New Books Fall 2010-Spring 2011

The UH Press Fall 2010-Spring 2011 catalog is now available! To view the 4.1M PDF, click on the catalog cover image to the left.

Highlights include:
* A timely collection of essays on the current state of Hawai`i addressing topics such as education, the environment, tourism, political culture, government, and poverty (The Value of Hawai`i: Knowing the Past, Shaping the Future)
* A fully illustrated coursebook that provides comprehensive instruction in the history and practical techniques of Chinese calligraphy (Chinese Writing and Calligraphy)
* A lavishly illustrated volume that traces the life and work of Hart Wood (1880-1957), an outspoken leader in the development of a Hawaiian style of architecture (Hart Wood: Architectural Regionalism in Hawaii)
* The inaugural volume of the Race and Ethnicity in Hawai`i series (Haoles in Hawai`i)
* New titles in the series Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory (In Buddha’s Company: Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War; Refiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma)
* An analysis of the origins, development, and distinctive features of Japan’s public spaces (Parkscapes: Green Spaces in Modern Japan)
* A new student-oriented dictionary in the ABC Chinese Dictionary series (ABC English-Chinese, Chinese-English Dictionary)
* A comic novel from the author of one of China’s most famous works of fiction, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (The Three Sui Quash the Demons’ Revolt)
* An introduction to the principle of dharma, the latest in the Dimensions of Asian Spirituality series (Dharma)