1989

Premiere Issue

Editors Robert Shapard
and Frank Stewart
Guest Editor Howard Goldblatt

The inaugural issue of MĀNOA features new fiction from China, guest-edited by Howard Goldblatt. Chinese authors include Li Xiao, Wang Yi, Zhang Hong, Zhu Lin, Ma Yuan, and Yang Zhenguang.

The issue also includes writing from twenty-one American authors on the state of the self in contemporary American short fiction; stories by Joyce Carol Oates (“Cave of Ten Thousand Sacrifices”) and Ann Beattie (“Nineteen Years”); poetry by American authors; and chapbook selections from Michael Hannon and Gene Frumkin.

The Hawai‘i work in this issue includes photographs by Wayne Levin, works by Hawai‘i poets, notices of books written and/or published in the islands, and commentaries by Hawai‘i fiction writers.

Extracts

“He followed me into the Field of Ghosts. I hit him with a rock. It caught him on the forehead and he went down. ‘He must be dead,’ she said. ‘He was still on the ground when I left. I killed him.’
    Dou Gua thought she heard a swish. The whip that Dou Bao used to herd sheep hung behind the door, its thongs snaking quietly down the mud wall. She knew by experience that that was how it sounded when it skimmed past her ear; she felt a muscle on her back jump. Actually, nothing moved. The oil lamp had crackled, sending off a spark and causing the shadow of the whip on the wall to flicker.
    Not a hint of expression on Dou Bao’s face.”
—from “Moonlight Over the Field of Ghosts”
by Yang Zhengguang

“The name ‘Little West Lake’ was a misnomer. Unlike the legendary scenic West Lake, the place where we met was nothing more than a deserted pond, rimmed with a variety of bushes, wild grasses, insects, rocks, and snake-like moss. In addition, the university agricultural station keeper’s guard dog kept barking. Altogether, the area seemed wholly different from the rest of the campus, where birds sang and fragrant flowers bloomed. We were told that the area had never been developed because it was the burial site of scores of former professors who had died to preserve the university in the days before liberation. Due to its desolation, most students never ventured there during their university days.”
—from “The Outsider” by Zhang Hong

212 pp., spring–fall 1989 (1:1–2), $20
ISSN 1045-7909
JSTOR