In Memoriam — Jon Van Dyke

Jon Van Dyke, professor, author, and a leading authority on Native Hawaiian law and constitutional law, passed away on November 29 while traveling in Australia. He joined the University of Hawai‘i Richardson School of Law in 1976 and was one of its longest-serving and most distinguished faculty members.

“Hawaii has lost a steadfast advocate for Native Hawaiian and civil rights, a leading expert on Hawaiian land and water rights law, and a tireless defender of public lands and natural resources.” —Hawai‘i State Senator Daniel Akaka

Photo: Star-Advertiser archives

UH Press Authors Advise The Descendants

According to the Wall Street Journal blog Speakeasy, UH Press authors Gavan Daws (Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands) and Randall Roth (Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement, and Political Manipulation at America’s Largest Charitable Trust) served as “tour guides through Honolulu society” for filmmakers Alexander Payne and Jim Burke during preproduction of The Descendants.

In addition, Daws read the script and shared his thoughts on the soundtrack, which features Hawai‘i artists exclusively. Roth provided guidance on trust law, in particular the rule against perpetuities—a key point in the plot surrounding George Clooney’s character, who must decide whether or not to sell a piece of prime Kaua‘i real estate that has been in his family for generations.

Photo: Fox Searchlight

Last 3 Days to Save 20% Off Our Entire Site

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Big Happiness: One of the Best Local Books of 2011

Big Happiness: The Life and Death of a Modern Hawaiian Warrior, by Mark Panek, is called “one of the best local books of 2011” in a review at Hawai‘i Book Blog:

“Big Happiness is an account of the amazing and tragic life of Percy Kipapa, local boy turned professional sumo wrestler. In my opinion it’s an important work of creative nonfiction and one of the best local books of 2011. Using a combination of personal experiences with Kipapa, interviews, newspaper articles and court documents, Panek has seamlessly composed a narrative that tells the story of how Percy Kipapa came home a hero only to end his life as a terrible reminder of the destructive power of “meth” addiction. It’s an unofficial biography of a man and a community struggling to stay afloat in a world changing too quickly.”

Read the entire review here: http://www.hawaiibookblog.com/articles/book-review-big-happiness/.

Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawai‘i

For more information on The Painted King author events in Hawai‘i this month, go to: https://uhpress.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/the-painted-king-book-launches./

The famous statue of Kamehameha I in downtown Honolulu is one of the state’s most popular landmarks. Many tourists—and residents—however, are unaware that the statue is a replica; the original, cast in Paris in the 1880s and the first statue in the Islands, stands before the old courthouse in rural Kapa‘au, North Kohala, the legendary birthplace of Kamehameha I. In 1996 conservator Glenn Wharton was sent by public arts administrators to assess the statue’s condition, and what he found startled him: A larger-than-life brass figure painted over in brown, black, and yellow with “white toenails and fingernails and penetrating black eyes with small white brush strokes for highlights. . . . It looked more like a piece of folk art than a nineteenth-century heroic monument.”

The Painted King: Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawai‘i is Wharton’s account of his efforts to conserve the Kohala Kamehameha statue, but it is also the story of his journey to understand the statue’s meaning for the residents of Kapa‘au.

“The Painted King will be essential reading for creators, curators, and devotees of public art.” —David Lowenthal, University College London; author of The Past Is a Foreign Country

“A path-breaking volume in conservation studies, The Painted King is certain to prompt readers to think further about the relationship between community and conservation in Hawaiian art, identity, and history.” —Stacy L. Kamehiro, author of The Arts of Kingship: Hawaiian Art and National Culture of the Kalākaua Era

November 2011
ISBN 978-0-8248-3495-1 $42.00 (CLOTH)
ISBN 978-0-8248-3612-2 / $19.00 (PAPER)

A Cultural History of Kanaky-New Calendonia

Nights of Storytelling: A Cultural History of New Caledonia, edited by Raylene Ramsay, is the first book to present and contextualize the founding texts of New Caledonia, a country sui generis in the relatively little-known French Pacific. Extracts from literary, ethnographic, and historical works in English translation introduce the many voices of a diverse culture as it moves toward “independence” or the “common destiny” framed by the 1998 Noumea Agreements. These texts reflect the coexistence of two major cultures, indigenous and European, shaped by the energies and shadows of empire and significantly influenced by one another.

Nights of Storytelling is a collaborative work complemented by La nuit des contes, a subtitled DVD of images and text, which features key works read or spoken, generally in the original French. It provides visual and aural access for the book’s Anglophone readers to the specific cultural, linguistic, and geographic contexts of these historical and literary works.

November 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3222-3 / $49.00 (CLOTH + DVD)