Bridges - FINAL DRAFT

BR i d g e s
vol. 11, #1
summer 2008
The Official Bamboo Ridge Press Donor Newsletter
To foster the appreciation, understanding, and creation of literary, visual, or performing arts by, for, or about Hawai‘i’s people
It Happened One Night
By Nicole Sawa
On the evening of Tuesday, March 11th, I
was at the Manoa Valley Theatre, marveling at
the size of the crowd gathering for the annual
“For the Love of Bamboo Ridge” fundraiser,
this year a “roast and toast” targeting the
founding editors. Every nametag seemed familiar; either I
instantly recognized the person or there was a vague sense
of “Was their story in Best of Bamboo Ridge or Growing Up
Local?” Roasters/toasters included Lee Tonouchi and LoisAnn Yamanaka, while others read emails/letters sent by people who could not attend. In all, seventeen people spoke and
about a hundred fifty attended to watch co-founders and coeditors Darrell Lum and Eric Chock squirm on stage.
I have known Darrell and Eric for about a year, a number
that pales in comparison to most people’s experiences with
the dauntless duo. Barbara Kagan, their calculus teacher at
McKinley High School, kicked off the night by talking about
the “prodigal son and the elder brother” (and if you can’t figure out which is the elder brother, look for the one without
the ponytail). Later, Mavis Hara read Sylvia Watanabe’s letter, which exposed the fifty-year-old Bamboo Ridge plot to
Eric and Darrell receive a Senate Certificate of Appreciation presented by
Senator Brian Taniguchi at Manoa Valley Theatre.
take over the world, with its roots in that hotbed of political
intrigue known as Ma‘ema‘e Elementary School. Wives Mae
Lum and Ghislaine Chock both spoke of Bamboo Ridge as a
person. Mae recounted nights spent poring over its (pre(continued on page 2)
New York Comes to Honolulu
Here at last! This fall, BRP
will release Morningside
Heights: New York Stories by
Joe Tsujimoto (Bamboo
Ridge issue #92). This wellcrafted collection of short
stories chronicles the life of
a Japanese American New
Yorker from his rebellious
youth spent on the edge of
Harlem in the ’50’s and ’60s,
through the Vietnam years,
to a career as a Honolulu
teacher. Nora Okja Keller,
author of Comfort Woman
and Fox Girl, says in her back
cover blurb: “Gritty and
poignant, this collection of semi-autobiographical stories traverses the streets of New York, Makawao, and memory, using
intimate details and tender riffs to invoke the spirit of a time
past, recall a community dispersed, and recreate the feeling
of home, lost and found.”
Join Joe when he reads from Morningside Heights!
7:00 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008
Luke Lecture Hall
Wo International Center
Punahou School
7:00 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2008
Campus Center Ballroom
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Bamboo Ridge Press was founded in 1978 to foster the appreciation, understanding, and creation of literary, visual, or
performing arts by, for, or about Hawai‘i’s people. Bamboo Ridge is a non-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization
funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, and the Hawai‘i
Community Foundation.
BRidges - Page 2
It Happened One Night (continued from page 1)
computer
age)
layout, panicking
when
printed
words fell off the
table.
Ghislaine
remembered how
she overheard Eric
talking on the
phone to someone
she thought was
named
Bamboo
Ridge in the middle
of the night: “That Eric and Darrell plan their counter-attack on
one? How many? roasters.
Five
dollars.
What’s your address? I can deliver.” She had wondered,
“Who was Bamboo and why was it so important to call so
late at night?”
At some point it occurred to me that the coordinator of
the roast/toast was fiendishly inspired: a high school
teacher, wives, what could be next? Only a “surprise”
roaster, of course! Tony Lee bounded onto the stage just
steps before John Heckathorn, the next scheduled speaker.
According to Lee, there was a legal grievance to air before
the crowd: as a student at UH, he had told Darrell about
Bamboo Ridge, the historic fishing spot near Hanauma Bay.
Darrell used it for
his newly launched
literary magazine
and never acknowledged
the
source. At the end,
he handed Darrell
and Eric two envelopes with their
names written in
bold black ink on
the
front—
John Heckathorn calls them “old futs.”
presumably legal
papers but hopefully the parties will be able to settle out of
court.
Then it was finally time for John Heckathorn, who
started the trend of calling the Bamboo boys “old futs.” He
described Eric as going from a “young radical to a retrograde
old fut without a single moment of respectability.” Marie
Hara read Stephen Sumida’s letter, in which Sumida laments, “We know from the way
they still act that Darrell and Eric
are doomed never to understand or appreciate how everyone born after 1980 actually
thinks of them as OLD FUTS.”
Lois-Ann Yamanaka accused
Heckathorn of stealing her “old
fut” thunder, an obvious impossibility because if there is someone whose thunder can’t be
stolen, it is Yamanaka: “Without
Darrell and Eric, there would be
no me … and I forty-six years old
Marie Hara emcees the event.
and no more mortgage!” Amalia Bueno
read Zack Linmark’s chain haiku on
“two old futs,” which included: “From
the heart / Two old futs / Make us
proud.” Lee Cataluna’s email (read by
Lisa Kanae) gave a specific example of
Darrell’s comparative age—and his wise
acceptance of his years—when she reminisced about reading “Da Beer Can Hat”
in school: “Every time I tell the story in
public about how I remember being in
elementary school reading ‘Beer Can
Hat’ and thinking it was the most amaz- Lee Tonouchi preing thing I had ever read, Darrell gets all sents a surprise gift to
the editors.
mad and says, ‘YOU WASN’T IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL! I NOT THAT OLD!’”
For all the jokes regarding their “venerableosity” (one of
Lee Tonouchi’s excellent neologisms), the fearless leaders—
and therefore Bamboo Ridge—don’t seem that old. At the end
of the evening, Darrell
and Eric rummaged
through a box of gifts
for the presenters, looking like two kids opening a new toy or giggling
over their next prank.
To honor Cedric Yamanaka, they played paper
football on stage. Every
speaker was given
something amusing
that fit his or her perThe editors (roastees) show off a boxful of
sonality or referenced
goodies—gifts that they lavished the presenters (roasters) with at the end of the
the author’s written
night.
work.
In the course of the evening, we had heard bits of Bamboo Ridge Press history and entertaining anecdotes about
the editors themselves. Nora Keller revealed their well-honed
strategy to nurture budding writers in workshop: Eric’s only
question was “Is this…local literature?” while Darrell asked
the “most maniniest questions” like “Can you really see your
own butt?” Not quite what one would expect from the cofounders and co-editors of “one of the longest-running noncommercial presses in the nation” (Honolulu Star-Bulletin
editorial, 03/07/08).
Which brings us to Milton Murayama’s question, as
voiced by Keith Kashiwada: “So…why Eric and Darrell not
rich?” The fate of
Bamboo
Ridge’s
world domination
plot provides a possible
answer:
“Anyone with any
serious plans at
taking over the
planet doesn’t begin by launching a
literary magazine.”
However, over 850 Lois-Ann Yamanaka gives her top three reasons
foot soldiers and 90 why she likes Eric and Darrell.
BRidges - Page 3
That’s Bamboo Ridge for You
More than two
hundred
people
came to the University of Hawai’i Campus Center Ballroom
on the evening of
April 30th for readings by authors from
Bamboo Ridge issue
#91. I suspect many
of them came to see
and hear Gerry Lopez, the surfer pictured on the book
cover. Before the
event, people waited
patiently in a long
line to get his autograph. He and Carlos Andrade presented their memories
about
the
Kaua‘i surf spot Pākalā and the early surfers who christened it “Infinity” and paid tribute to the late Michael
McPherson, originally scheduled to also read that night.
“Do you want me to read from the book or…?” “Do
whatever you want.” According to Kealoha, that was the
exchange between him and Darrell/Eric regarding the reading.
Brenda Kwon asked for the audience’s input: “I’ll let
you decide…spoken word or prose?” “Spoken word.” “Do
you want to hear angry political or cultural sentimental?”
“Angry!” “Okay!”
So Kealoha and Brenda Kwon made their decisions
and both gave searing performances of their work, Kealoha
“dancing with circumstance” and Kwon firing up the room
with “You can’t take away a woman’s fists / then punish
her for using the things she’s got left, / like her words, /
her feelings, / and her power of eternal memory.”
Following the performance poets was Michael Little
with his hilarious “Seven Ways to Tell If You Married a
Cosmo Girl.” The story is funny in print, even better when
Little reads it. Sue Cowing, Eric Paul Shaffer, and Moriso
Teraoka also read and the night ended with the three Editors’ Choice Award winners, Rachel Ana Brown for Best
Poetry, Peter Van Dyke for Best Prose, and Christine Thomas for Best New Writer. Slated to read but unable to attend was Big Island writer Jesse S. Fourmy whose wife
gave birth to a beautiful baby girl that night, just about
when the reading was wrapping up.
The following weekend, on the evening of Friday, May
9th, it was standing room only at Native Books in the Ward
Warehouse when another diverse group of writers read
their work from Bamboo Ridge issue #91: Marie Hara,
Wing Tek Lum, Alexei Melnick, Susan Schultz, and Linda
Yara.
—Nicole Sawa
It Happened One Night (continued from page 2)
manifestos have shown that the “success of the dark plot
has been slow but sure.” Personally, it is still mind-boggling
to realize how much Darrell and Eric have accomplished
with little resources and little time. When I called Bamboo
Ridge Press to ask about their work/volunteer opportunities,
I asked for human resources and received a long pause
from Eric in return. I had just joined countless bookstores,
reporters, and other inquirers in assuming that “the godfathers of local literature” would have an office somewhere,
and wouldn’t need to advertise the editor’s home number.
(At least I didn’t call in the middle of the night.) Lee
Tonouchi’s poem noted, “pretty soon they going ma-ke…but
they lucky.” I think countless writers and readers alike would
argue over who was luckier: Darrell and Eric, or the people
who have been influenced by Bamboo Ridge.
Lois-Ann Yamanaka quotes Darrell saying, “Until you
see yourself in literature, you don’t exist.” So thank you,
Darek and Errel (or is that Errel and Darek?) for doing much
more than merely existing for the last thirty years. In another
thirty years, they’ll be eighty, but Lee Cataluna’s last statement will apply even then: “Even though they’re old farts,
they still get ’em!”
Senator Norman Sakamoto (left) and Senator Brian Taniguchi (right) honor
the editors at the State Capitol following the roast.
Mavis Hara and Kent Sakoda celebrate the
Honorable Mention for Excellence in Literature
for “An Offering of Rice” at the
2008 Ka Palapala Po‘okela Awards.
BRidges - Page 4
Books, Books, Books (and Music!)
Moderator Kent Sakoda leads a discussion with Cedric Yamanaka, Juliet
Kono, Ann Inoshita, and Eric Chock in the “Pidgin Stil Yet Alaiv!” panel.
Ten o’clock on an already hot Saturday morning in May,
only the start of what’s going to be a hot hot hot summer in
Hawai‘i. Lots of parking at City Hall, but it had also been the
month of the vog, so the two balanced each other out. The
air was saturated with heat and sun and you couldn’t get a
breeze for love nor books. However, that didn’t stop people
from singing, acting, reading, attending panels/presentations, dancing, eating, or even writing poetry. It
was the first
day of the third
annual Hawai‘i
Book and Music Festival!
A special
Bamboo Ridge
Press
30th
anniversary
program was
available at the
Hawaii Council
for the Humani“Ho, That’s Us!” moderator Gary Pak with panelists
ties (HCH) paJoe Stanton, Joe Tsujimoto, Wing Tek Lum, and
vilion,
titled
Michael Little.
“The Literature
of DIVERSITY CULTURE LANGUAGE PERFORMANCE in Hawaii,” with essays by Susan M. Schultz, Craig Howes, Kent
Sakoda, and Yokanaan Kearns; an introduction by HCH Executive Director Bob Buss; and a brief history of BRP by
Amalia Bueno. Subtitle: "WE MADE IT!" (No not really, but
hey why not?)
F r o m
A m a l i a
Bueno’s piece:
“…today’s issues are 300page perfect
bound books
that
feature
poetry
and
prose by both
emerging and
established
writers. Some Micheline Soong helps a customer at the BRP tent.
of Hawai‘i’s best-known
authors were first published in Bamboo Ridge.
Special issues of the journal—single-author collections and anthologies
with unique themes—
have for more than a
generation been used as
textbooks or recommended reading in high
school and college classMavis Hara and Michael Little volunteer
rooms both locally and on at the Passport table.
the mainland.”
What? What’s that sound? I think it’s Darrell Lum, yelling,
“NOT A GENERATION! I NOT THAT OLD!”
Christy Passion, Juliet Kono, Wendy Miyake, and Susan Schultz at the “We
So Diverse” panel.
Noon found Kent Sakoda moderating the language presentation (aka “Pidgin Panel”). I thought this panel was fascinating, not only because it included Darrell and Lee
Tonouchi, but because the presenters brought up topics such
as pidgin in high school, different towns, and even politicians.
Tyler Miranda remembered, “Growing up in Ewa Beach, you
either speak pidgin or you don’t survive. And you just learn
how to survive.” Lee Tonouchi waxed poetic: “Pidgin is fly /
Pidgin is dope / Today we get role models who give us hope”
(i.e. Ben Cayetano, or as Lee phrases it, a campaign slogan if
I ever heard one: “Ben is da bomb!”). Lee asked his UH professor Jean Toyama if she would help him establish a B.A. in
pidgin. Her reaction (note: in her own words): “What? Are you
crazy?!?”
Jean Toyama and Darrell contrasted their high school
experiences with pidgin. As a child, Jean and her pidginspeaking classmates “got the fricatives washed out of
[them].” They were taken out of class every Friday and given
special elocution lessons, “just like Eliza Doolittle.” She attended Roosevelt High School, which had been “chosen as
the Standard English School.”
(continued on page 5)
BRidges - Page 5
Books, Books, Books (continued from page 4)
Jean: “People from McKinley didn’t like us, they thought
we stay on our high horse.”
Later, Darrell: “I went to McKinley. [audience laughter] I
wish I could’ve gone to Roosevelt, that was the poor man’s
Punahou.”
The Pidgin Panel moderated by Kent Sakoda was presented again on Sunday, with different panelists, as were the
other panels: on culture, led by Craig Howes,: on diversity, led
by Susan Schultz; and on performance, led by Yokanaan
Kearns. Sunday’s program in the HCH pavilion included an
Aloha Shorts reading (taped for broadcast on KIPO) and there
were slots for open mic readings on both days of the festival.
The biggest crowd gathered in the pavilion on Saturday afternoon for the Hawai‘i Literary Arts Council’s presentation of
the Elliott Cades Awards to Ian MacMillan and Wendy Miyake.
—Nicole Sawa
SNPT Redux
Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre was Lois-Ann
Yamanaka’s first book publication in 1993. Since then
she has published six novels
and one picture book. In 2003
she left a 12-year career as a
middle-school teacher and,
along with educator Mel
Spencer, founded Na‘au, a
writing school offering individual and group instruction to
students of all ages.
Upon the reissue of SNPT,
editors Eric Chock and Darrell
Lum, poet Wing Tek Lum, and
managing editor Joy Kobayashi-Cintron asked Lois-Ann to reflect on her work. Below is
an excerpt of the interview, which will be included in the new
edition of SNPT.
*****
Sacha Mangine and Amalia Bueno collect poetry lines for
Bamboo Shoots.
Aloha Shorts
Join us for a special live taping of
Aloha Shorts on Sunday evening,
September 7th at 7 pm in the
Atherton Studio at Hawaii Public
Radio (738 Kaheka St.) featuring the four BR renshi poets reading their linked poems. The event is
free but reservations are suggested and may be
made by calling 955-8821. Aloha Shorts is broadcast on KIPO 89.3 FM every Tuesday at 6:30 pm
and features readings of work selected from Bamboo Ridge and music by local musicians. Learn
more about linked poetry and the year-long poetry
project at www.bambooridge.com. Or if you're inspired, click on Bamboo Shoots
and post your own writing. Just
register the first time to post,
then just log in to share your
work.
W. T. LUM: So which poem or group of
poems started it for you?
YAMANAKA: The first poem was “Tita:
Japs,” and then “Lickens” was next. I
mean those were the—you know like
when a volcano explodes—those were the
first two explosions, and I couldn’t stop
after that, it was like it just like blew open.
I was in so much emotional pain over the way my madda
used to give me lickens everyday that I had to write that
story, I had to write it out.
W. T. LUM: What was the excitement when you first were
starting to work on this book?
YAMANAKA: Liberation, you know, you feel you just letting it
all out. The stuff you feel like you bleeding out all over the
place from every hole in your body. Once you write it, you’re
not bleeding anymore, you’re just kind of fixing yourself,
making yourself whole, making yourself better. With every
book, there was a purpose that made me feel like I was a
better person or like I had made something right that was
wrong. And the latest book was like, I freed a whole valley of
fricken ghosts [referring to Behold the Many]. There was a
purpose, I led them, I helped them go home to the light.
D. LUM: Now that you have the perspective of nearly 15
years after this book came out, does it stand the test of
time?
YAMANAKA: I wish I could do it now that I know more about
writing. I wish I could re-do the book, like, I would have made
it fuller. I would have made each character and section
more realized. Like, Girlie, Tita, I would have made it more
realized, more fleshed out, that Lucy part, which, by the way,
is still potentially a novel. I wanted to write the first pidgin
novel, Ten Thousand Wishes in the Round because that end
part about Lucy is a novel in poems. I didn’t know if it was a
novel in poems, but I wish I had more fully realized each
part…with more poems.
BRidges - Page 6
Renshi Poetry Project Kicks Off Anniversary Year
Bamboo Ridge is bringing poetry to the people by featuring
linked poems, or “renshi” on its website. Linked poems or verse
come from the classical Japanese tradition called “renga,” and
was modernized as “renshi” by poet Makoto Ooka. The tradition
called for poets to entertain the noble link, connect, join, and
group.
Four local poets—Jean Toyama, Juliet Kono, Ann Inoshita,
and Christy Anne Passion—have taken turns composing a poem
a week and posting them on www.bambooridge.com. Each poet
takes the last line of the previous poet’s work and creates a new
poem. The linked poetry process will continue each week during
2008. If you haven’t yet checked out the poems yet, head on
over to our website.
Ann Inoshita is a poet born and raised on
O‘ahu. She has published poems in Bamboo Ridge, Hawai‘i Pacific Review, Tinfish,
and has publications forthcoming in Hawai‘i Review. Her book of poems, Mānoa
Stream, was published in 2007 by Kahuaomānoa Press. She is a guest author at the
2008 Celebrate Reading: Book Clubs and
Youth Literature Festival, a 2007 recipient of The John Young
Scholarship in the Arts, and a 2006 recipient of the Myrtle Clark
Award for Creative Writing. She has an M.A. in English from the
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She is finishing her second book
and is active within the writing community.
Juliet Kono has written two books of poems, Hilo Rains (1988) and Tsunami Years
(1995), which were both published by Bamboo Ridge Press. She has won the Elliot
Cades Award for Literature, the American
Japanese National Literary Award, and the
Ka Palapala Po‘okela Award for Excellence
in Literature. She was a recipient of a
US/Japan Friendship Commission Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship in 1999. Born and raised in Hilo, Hawai‘I, she now lives
in Honolulu and teaches English at Leeward Community College.
Christy Passion, born and raised on O‘ahu,
began writing in 2004 after being exposed
to Maori poetry. She has since won the
American Academy of Poetry Award in
2004 and 2008, the University of Hawai‘i’s
Hawaiian Poetry Award, and the James
Vaughn Award in 2007. Her work has been
published in Bamboo Ridge, Hawaii Review, Hawaii Pacific Review and most recently in 2008, the anthology, Honolulu Stories. Expanding on to
short stories, writing remains a focal point in her life.
Jean Toyama, aka Jean Yamasaki Toyama,
was born in Hawaii before statehood. She
went to school at Ka‘ahumanu Elementary
where she learned to say, “the”, then
Mānoa Elementary, where the lesson was
reinforced. After Stevenson intermediate,
Roosevelt High, UH, Purdue and UC-Irvine
she taught at UHM for over 30 years and
retired as Interim Associate Dean of the College of Languages,
Linguistics and Literature. She must have liked school. She is
now looking for ways to keep her neurons firing.
Here is a short excerpt from July’s poems:
From this darkness
Jean Toyama
I see a small light
green and glowing.
It moves from side to side
like the sagelampu I carried
for you, Mama.
You said,
“Quick get the lamp, Tanouesan has a high fever.”
I held the lamp in front of us and the light
would zig zag along the dirt path
in rhythm with our footfalls.
Your healing cups would clink in time
with the crunch of dirt and small stones under our feet.
We were alone
except for frogs croaking in the dark
and the iridescent
bugs
buzzing along with us.
Buzzing Along With Us
Juliet Kono
are your companions in life—
your memories—
that can spring out of nowhere.
Take you to a childhood afternoon
or light a mountain trail
you once walked-the same light attenuated by bamboo,
swaying in the wind’s coming-where a fall off the precipice
meant no returning
to the porch shaded
by the jacaranda.
Or, a sudden face
you had not thought of in years
may flash before you,
young as you saw it last,
but wouldn’t recognize, today.
Calling All Writers
Deadline for submission
of poetry and prose
for the next regular issue
of Bamboo Ridge
is September 30, 2008.
See submission guidelines
at www.bambooridge.com.
SUBSCRIBE NOW!
Or Else...
“Or else what? What you goin’ do to me?”
Something bad. Something horrible. Something unheard of. You’re gonna pay...more for
local literature, that is.
We have held our subscription rates as long as possible in the face of rising production
and shipping costs, but the time has come for us to make an adjustment. Our next issue,
Morningside Heights: New York Stories (Bamboo Ridge issue #92), by Joe Tsujimoto, will
be our first book with a cover price of $20.00. Subsequent issues will be similarly priced.
With the release of the new book, subscription rates will increase to $35.00 for two issues
(a savings of $5) and $65.00 for four issues ($15.00 off total of cover prices).
Renew your subscription (or start a brand new one) by September 30, 2008 and take advantage of our old rates of $25.00 for two issues (save $15!) and $45.00 for four issues
(save $35!).
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SAVE DIS DATE! - Saturday, December 6, 2008,11a.m.
Bamboo Ridge Press 30th Anniversary Celebration @ Hale Koa Hotel
Call or e-mail if you would like to donate raffle items.
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Upcoming from BRP
Bamboo Ridge issue
#93—Islands Linked
by Ocean, a collection
of short stories by Lisa
Linn Kanae. Kanae’s
stories are set in contemporary Hawai‘i—a
place rich with the
complexities of crosscultural encounters,
multiple languages,
identity, racism, assimilation, and the
revival of Native HaEditor Eric Chock and author Lisa Kanae
waiian
culture and selfafter a tough editing session.
determination. Like
these islands, each story is peopled with characters of varied ages, ethnicities, wealth, and desires, and, like the
ocean that surrounds the islands, the vein that connects
these stories is the commonality they share—compassion for
what oftentimes is difficult to comprehend and appreciate.
Kanae’s characters’ voices represent a mix of Hawaiian and
pidgin, as well as those more upwardly mobile locals struggling with their assimilation and identity. This is a view from
the inside with more than sovereignty politics as its focus,
thus revealing more of contemporary Hawaiian life.
77156
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