Lois-Ann Yamanaka

Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Lois-Ann Yamanaka Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Occupation	writer, Language Arts Resource teacher, English Teacher, Hawaii Department of Education.
Notable works	Blu's Hanging, Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers
Website
http://www.yamanakanaau.com/

Lois-Ann Yamanaka (born September 7, 1961 in Hoʻolehua, Molokaʻi, Hawaiʻi) is a Japanese-American poet and novelist from Hawaiʻi. Many of her critically acclaimed literary works are written in Hawaiian Pidgin, and some of her writing has dealt with controversial ethnic issues. In particular, her works confront themes of Asian American families and the local culture of Hawaiʻi.

Biography

Early Years-

Lois-Ann Yamanaka was born September 7th, 1961 in Ho’olchua, Molokai, Hawaii. Her parents, Harry and Jean Yamanaka, raised her and her four younger sisters in the sugar plantation town of Pahala.

Both of her parents were school teachers, though her father later became a taxidermist. Following in her parents footsteps, Lois-Ann also joined them in their passion for education: In 1983, she received a Bachelor’s Degree, and in 1987 her Master's Degree, both in Education at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Career-

Yamanaka then went on to become an English and Language Arts resource teacher. Inspired by her own students' honesty demonstrated within poetry assignments, she began writing on her own. Little did she know she would become a breakthrough writer who would receive significant criticism after expressing minority and racial issues experienced by herself and others alike within the Pidgin speaking community of Hawaii.

She completed her first book, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre, in 1993, which, was coined "'witty' and 'street-smart'" by Kiana Davenport in Women's Review of Books. The novel, "composed of four verse novellas narrated by working-class Hawaiian teenagers...explore(d) such subjects as ethnic identity, sexual awakening, drug use, and abusive relationships." Lawrence Chua, of the Voice Literary Supplement, wrote, "Her poetry is enabled by its elegant structure as much as its indolent diction. Saturday Night is not a lonely specimen of street life but a bold push at the borders of meaning and memory."

In 1996, Yamanaka’s second book, Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers, again told through the Pidgin dialect, was a coming-of-age story made up of, "a series of connected vignettes", that, "examin(ed) larger issues of class and ethnicity". Lauren Belfer, of the New York Times Book Review, claimed the book to be, "somewhat impenetrable"...leaving "haunting images" in the minds of readers.

Again in 1997, Yamanaka completed her third book, Blu’s Hanging 'which created even more of an uproar among Asian American critics. As the novel treated characters of both Filipino and Japanese American backgrounds within the Hawaiin landscape, she was given the Asian American Studies National Book Award in 1998, however, it was annulled almost immediately after because of her lack of censorship in a stereotypical context. The work was deemed, "a well-wrought but painful work" by Anna Quan Leon in the Library Journal. In defending herself and work, Yamanaka spoke out against criticism in telling, "Newsweek reporter Donna Foote that 'the distinction between the narrator and the author is not being made'".

Following Blu's Hanging, Yamanaka published, ''Heads by Harry', which dealt with homosexuality and gender identity issues. The book received mixed reviews; "to some extent, Yamanaka has replaced racism with sexism and homophobia, 'safer topics'", concluded Nation reviewer Mindy Pennybacker. However, Michael Porter, the New York Times Book Review critic applauded Yamanaka's efforts in stating, "{she} delivers a precise look at this vibrant 'Japanese-American' culture yet still speaks to anyone who has experienced the joy, security and small humiliations of family life".

Name Me Nobody'' was her fourth book geared towards a much more adolescent-based audience. In illustrating the difficulties of young 'teenhood' and the surrounding superficialities, the "'vignettes of young girlhood praised for their vivid images and expert distillation of language' related a Horn Book reviewer..'Yamanaka provides young adult literature with a fresh and welcome voice "noteworthy for its complexity and richness'."

In 2006, Yamanaka explored a spiritual approach in the novel, Behold the Many', which is set on the island of Oahu. In the book, a young woman is haunted by ghosts which ends in what a Kirkus Review contributor called a, "beautifully tragic" outcome. Carol Haggas, of Booklist wrote the book was a, "richly atmospheric novel which paints a chillingly spectral portrait of souls tormented by love and guilt."

Current-

Lois-Ann Yamanaka is currently married to John Inferrera. In between writing, she and her husband continue to teach. Together they have a son, John jr. and live in Honolulu, Hawaii

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As an Author-

"Lois-Ann Yamanaka's fiction focuses on young, working-class Japanese-Americans from Hawaii who struggle with such typical issues of adolescence as sexual development and peer acceptance while coming to terms with their cultural identity as the descendants of Japanese immigrant laborers."

"Yamanaka once said,' My work involves bringing to the page the utter complexity, ferocious beauty and sometimes absurdity of our ethnic relationships here in the islands. The way we language about each other and with each other in 'talk story' communities resonates in me wih every word I write. I know this because as my friend Lisa Asagi says, 'It's impossible to ban the sound of memory'."

• University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
  • B. Ed., 1983
  • M. Ed., 1987

List of Works

Among her principal works are:

• Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre, a book of poems written in Hawaiian Pidgin (1993)
• Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers (1996)
• Blu's Hanging (1997)
• Heads by Harry (1998)
• Name Me Nobody (2000)
• Father of the Four Passages (2001)
• The Heart's Language (2005)
• Behold the Many (2006)

Awards

• National Endowment for the Humanities grant, 1990
• Pushcart Prize for Poetry, 1993
• Carnegie Foundation Grant, 1994
• National Endowment for the Arts grant, 1994
• Pushcart Prize, 1994
• Rona Jaffe Award for Women Writers, 1996
• Lannan Literary Award, 1998
• Asian American Literary Award, 1998.

Other Publications

• Yamanaka, Lois-Ann. "This Man Is an Island." The New York Times 18 Jan. 2009, Opinion sec.: WK14. Print.

• Yamanaka, Lois-Ann. "Sunnyside Up." Chicago Review, Vol. 39, No. 3/4, A North Pacific Rim Reader (1993), pp. 175-178, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25305741

External links

• Official site
• Two articles on Lois-Ann Yamanaka
• "What Boddah You?: The Authenticity Debate," The Nation, March 1, 1999
• Lois-Ann Yamanaka profile on Tom Bolling's faculty pages
• Lois-Ann Yamanaka at IMDb