WINE & WORDS!
Wednesday, September 22, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted on 8/26/2010 2:51:00 PM
Join us for a special pre-launch party for Anshu: Dark Sorrow, a new novel by Juliet S. Kono.
Wine & Words
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
7:00 p.m. reception
7:30 p.m. reading by Juliet S. Kono
Manoa Valley Theatre
2833 East Manoa Road
(Parking at Safeway in Manoa Marketplace)
$15 suggested donation at the door
Reservations recommended. Call 626.1481 or e-mail brinfo@bambooridge.com
Based on real life events, Anshu is a tale of passion and human triumph in the face of extraordinary adversity, spanning the cane fields of Hawai‘i and the devastation in Hiroshima. A pregnant and unmarried Himiko Aoki finds her Hawai‘i-Japanese American identity clashing with Japan’s cultural norms when she is sent to live with relatives in Tokyo in 1941 and becomes trapped there at the outbreak of war. When America drops the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Himiko finds herself adapting in unexpected ways just to survive.
"Anshu, a Japanese word written with the characters for “darkness” and “grief,” is a powerfully moving and vividly rendered story of destruction by fire and the flames of memory which illuminates the larger canvas of the Asia-Pacific War as only a deeply imagined literary narrative of war can.
—Gayle K. Sato, Meiji University
Juliet S. Kono has crafted a remarkable novel, weaving together experiences of darkness and flames and turning it into a story of luminous strength and determination. Woven through this world of fire, Kono intersperses the gentle offerings of Japanese Buddhism, not the meditative Zen of American celebrities but the counsel of centuries of experience passing through earthly existence, “this burning house.” This is a great story, lovingly written by someone whose skills were honed by years of dedication to poetry. Read this book.
—Franklin Odo, founding director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program
To write Anshu the author had to live with the novel’s fictional narrator for years of her life, in order to learn and to tell the unspeakable about a subject few if any Americans before Kono have been able to speak about without guilt and revulsion. Anshu, the very word defined by this novel, means an understanding, an apprehension deeper than guilt, deeper than fear, than hate, than love and pity and sympathy, deeper than resignation, deeper than acceptance.
—Stephen H. Sumida, University of Washington"
Anshu is Juliet S. Kono’s first novel. Her previous publications include two books of poetry, Hilo Rains and Tsunami Years; a collaborative work of linked poems with three other poets, No Choice but to Follow; a short story collection, Ho‘olulu Park and the Pepsodent Smile; and a children’s book, The Bravest ‘Opihi. The recipient of several awards, including the US/Japan Friendship Commission Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship, she has been anthologized widely, most recently in the Imagine What It’s Like: A Literature and Medicine Anthology. In 2006, she won the Hawai‘i Award for Literature.
Born and raised in Hilo, Hawai‘i, she now lives in Honolulu with her husband and teaches composition and creative writing at Leeward Community College.
This publication was made possible with support from the Cooke Foundation, the Mayor’s Office of Culture and the Arts (MOCA), the Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts (SFCA), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
This event is presented in partnership with the Hawai‘i Council for the Humanities, with additional support from the "We the People" initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Please visit the "Teachers Corner" at www.bambooridge.com or www.hihumanities.org.