From the Lanai and Other Hawaiian Stories (MVP) - Softcover

Saiki, Jessica

3.1

10 ratings by Goodreads

9780898231274: From the Lanai and Other Hawaiian Stories (MVP)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0898231272 ISBN 13: 9780898231274

Publisher: New Rivers Press, 1991

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These stories, set in a sleepy Hawaiian town before and during World War II, examine the lives of a community of Japanese-Americans. "The most accomplished collection of stories published in 1991."--W.P. Kinsella

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Review:

There is a special beauty in an artist's pencil sketches that form the basis for the later, heavier oil paintings. The slightness of the lines carry implications; an arm outstretched, yet unfinished, conveys its own emotion. So it is with Jessica Saki's stories. Brief and elusive, their meanings are contained in what is suggested, but seldom explained. Style mirrors content in this collection of seventeen stories about the people of the Japanese-American community in Hawaii - divorced from the white-skinned haoles that occasionally enter their lives, teetering between old Japan and new Hawaiian America, searching for self in the midst of contradictory options. Young people and old maids cross the lines of convention, quietly or in full rebellion; old men search for meanings they have lost; haoles attempt with only occasional success to reach beyond their own circumscribed points of view. Through brief conversations packed with meaning and descriptions that touch down and lift off as deftly as dragonflies, Jessica Saki shows us unexpected mavericks, small pains, sudden realizations, and the sometimes complete misunderstanding that can exist between human beings and across cultures. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister

From Publishers Weekly:

These 17 short stories are as delicately wrought as a lei, with evocative portraits of Japanese-Americans and other Hawaiians, many of them living in the harbor town of Lunalilo. Saiki ( Once, a Lotus Garden ) creates memorable characters with a knack for getting at the truth about people. "Oribu," for example, is the account of a cook's three months in the employ of the wealthy Finches, larded with pithy comments about the couple ("When he Mr. Finch was mad he zipped up his mouth and wouldn't give the time of day to anyone excepting the dogs. He talked to Wimpy and Popeye as though they were his sweethearts. Never talked to Mrs. Finch that way"p.6 ). The stories often have a dark, bitter side, painting racial prejudices between whites and Japanese, and the lost dreams of people doomed to dreary jobs and loveless lives (like Hatsu Sugai, a plump, taciturn woman who is rejected by two suitors because her parents committed suicide). But these are not depressing tales. Above all, Saiki's characters believe that life must go on, and most of them somehow manage to persevere, nursing their wounds and surrounded by the natural splendor of Hawaii.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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