1997

Homeland
Writing from New Zealand

Series Editor Frank Stewart
Guest Editors Reina Whatiri and Robert Sullivan

Century of Dreams
Writing from the Philippines

Series Editor Frank Stewart
Guest Editors Eric Gamalinda and Alfred Yuson

In his five-volume anthology of Maori literature, Te Ao Marama,Witi Ihimaera calls the 1990s the flowering of literature written by Maori people. "We may have come to a crossroads," he writes, “of a literature of a past and a literature of a present and future.” MANOA is pleased to showcase some of the work from this new flowering in Homeland. The writing published here was gathered by guest editors Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan, and includes some of New Zealand's best-known Maori authors Patricia Grace, Hone Tuwhare, Alan Duff, and Ihimaera—as well as emerging and less well known writers.

Each of the pieces is an energetic exploration of homeland. Perceptions of home are also explored in essays by Susan Vreeland and David Tager, and in a symposium titled “Intimate Dwellings.” Other works in this collection include two previously untranslated stories by Nobel Prize author Yasunari Kawabata; an interview with Hugh Moorhead on his fifty-year search for the meaning of life; and, as always, outstanding North American fiction, poetry, and reviews. The art portfolio consists of photography by Hawai‘i artists Anne Kapulani Landgraf and Mark Hamasaki, known collectively as Piliamo‘o. Their work documents the restoration of the streams in Waiahole Valley on the island of O‘ahu. This too is an expression of homeland.

About the guest editors: Reina Whaitiri was born in 1943 to a Pakeha mother and Maori father. With Linda Tuhiwai Te Rina Smith, she coedits a journal of Maori women's writing, Te Pua. She is a member of the council of the Academy for the Humanities, Humanz, and is a tireless supporter of Pacific and Maori literature.

Robert Sullivan is Ngapuhi and Irish. Born in 1967 in Auckland, he has authored critically acclaimed books of poetry, won the PEN award for young writer of the year for his poetry and prose, and been widely anthologized.

The winter 1997 issue features fiction, poetry, and essays from the Philippines as well as new work from the U.S. and throughout the Pacific. The publication of this volume coincides with the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Philippine Revolution (1898), and the feature illuminates the special relationship between America and the Philippine archipelago, with its 7,000 islands and 800 languages.

Among the outstanding Filipino writers are Rowena Torrevillas, Bino A. Realuyo, Jose Y. Dalisay Jr., Cirilo F. Bautista, Marjorie M. Evasco, Simeon P. Dumdum Jr., Gemino H. Abad, Lakambini A. Sitoy, Michelle Cruz Skinner, Luis H. Francia, Eric Gamalinda, and Alfred A. Yuson. The US writing includes fiction by Barry Lopez, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Josip Novakovich, and Gordon Lish; poetry by Jane Hirshfield, Alberto Rios, Robert Dana, and Arthur Sze; and an essay by Donald Morrill. And, as always, there are insightful reviews of current books, such as one on a John Muir omnibus.

In addition, a portfolio of fine visual art by Hawai‘i photographer Franco Salmoiraghi brings to life some of the Filipino experience in Hawai‘i. The first Filipinos arrived in the islands in 1906 as contract laborers to satisfy the demand for workers created by the labor-intensive sugarcane industry, which was Hawai‘i's major economic activity until the 1960s. But local sugar growing has long been in a period of decline, and the last crop was harvested in 1996 above the town of Pahala in the Ka‘u district on the Big Island. “It was a very sad and poignant time in Pahala town,” according to Salmoiraghi. “For those people whose jobs and lives depended on the plantation, this was the only life that several generations of their families ever knew.” Many of the displaced workers are Filipinos, and this series of photographs is a salute to the passing of an era they were instrumental in shaping.

248 pp. summer 1997 (9:1), $20
ISBN 978-0-8248-1973-X
JSTOR

216 pp. winter 1997 (9:2), $20
ISBN 978-0-8248-2858-9
JSTOR