ISLE PAGES
New releases by Hawaii authors
"Century of the Tiger -- One Hundred Years of Korean Culture in America"
edited by Jenny Ryun Foster, Heinz Insu and Frank Stewart (University of Hawaii Press, $24.95 softcover)
Reviewed by Burl Burlingame This is something rather brave and unusual -- a centennial celebration of an immigrant group told primarily through literature; essays, poems, short stories, novel snippets, and laid out like a history book or art-show catalogue. Unlike a catalogue, it's actually readable, and most of it is quite moving. (Shouldn't there be a piece by Nora Okja Keller?) Except in Hawaii, Koreans had very little impact on America until the last quarter-century, when more of these highly educated, highly motivated and resolute people began flooding in. Korea was under the heel of Japan for so long that the pieces here dwell more on that fractious relationship than with the U.S. Under circumstances like these, no wonder Koreans would rather emigate to the U.S. rather than Japan. Rather precious in tone and not for every taste, but it'll look great on your coffeetable. Get one to read, too.
bburlingame@starbulletin.com
Atlas of the Pacific Islands by Max Quanchi (Bess Press, $24.95) The average atlas has piles of information about every corner of Europe and the United States, begins to get thin as it covers South America, Africa and Asia, and then generally devotes a single -- mostly blue! -- page to the entire Pacific. For those of us who live in this one-third of the world's surface, history teacher Quanchi's very thorough text will come in useful. Full of colorful maps, illustrations, photographs and statistics of each island and nation, Quanchi doesn't forget the rest of the world either, but they're there because of the way they impact the Pacific. Quanchi also can't help being a teacher, and there are activity guides and discussion of basic atlas essentials such as the notion of "scale" when preparing maps. Every library, classroom (and newsroom) should have one of these, and I suspect many homes will as well.
Fishing Hawaii Offshore by Jim Rizzuto (Rizzuto, $18.95) I'm not sure when Mr. Rizzuto actually has time to fish, as he's spent 40 years writing about it. This is another in his series that has hooked anglers with sharp, clear and sometimes exciting writing about ... well ... about fishing!
The Rise and Fall of the O'ahu Kingdom by Ross Cordy (Mutual, $10.95) Former state archaeologist Cordy has essentially recycled a professional paper into a slim textbook. Useful and detailed, it barely qualifies as a book, unless you want to read a whole book in 10 minutes.
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