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Summary: "I felt like she wrote the book just for me!"
Review: Finally, an author who writes primarily for local people about local culture. Before Lois-Ann Yamanaka came along, I was never able to go back to "small kid time". Now she is my passport. No other writer ever made me laugh so loud and cry so hard. Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers touched my soul because it was my story too. Mahalo Tita
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Summary: The Powerful Voice of a Girl!
Review: Hurray for Lois-Ann Yamanaka! She is one our greatest talents--her voice powerful, poetic, particular, so funny, and very much her own. Her characters are riotous, uncontrollable, they LIVE. Lovey in particular is terriffic. Her fantasies and motives, loyalties and pains are like no one else's I'd ever known or read of, but they are the stuff of our greatest literature. She is one of the most vital female characters in recent literature, we need more like her! The pre-teen Madame Bovary of Hawai'i, the Moll Flanders of Hilo, as insouciant as Lolita, but with a voice as knowing as Humbert Humbert's, Lovey SPEAKS--she speaks her mind, and speaks UP, she sasses with the best of them, she speaks her dreams and wishes, and yet we see that even she is silenced sometimes. This book stayed with me a long time after I read it. Its rewards are many, but it is worth re-reading it for the rambunctious, poignant poetry of its language and dialogue alone. On all of our behalves, I wish Ms. Yamanaka a long and thriving writing career.
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Summary: Great Book with Broad Cross-Over Appeal
Review: I just bought this book in Hawaii yesterday and read it all the way back to Baltimore with Israel Kamakawiwo'le (Bradda IZ) live-in-concert CD playing on my portable CD player. The combination brought Yanamaka's beautiful, poignant and powerful dialogue alive for me. This book resonated for me in so many ways -- as an African American tourist in an island where there was complex commingling and separation of the ethnic groups as well as a heirarchical order to the society based on ethnic origin and appearance. I also identified with the book as a daughter of Jamaican immigrants who carefully spoke in "correct" English to their children but spoke Jamaican patois (the equivalent of Lovey's pidgin, Creole Hawaiian) with each other and with family members. I picked up early on that how you sound and how you look affects your standing in society and now speak perfect English but mourn my inability to speak patois. So I empathize with Lovey's despair of every being able to speak perfect haole English. But what probably got me the most was Yanamaka's hauntingly detailed description of Lovey's rapture with Shirley Temple's Heidi. It resonated strongly with my childhood love of Shirley's perfect ringlets, cherubic smile, and her love for Grandpa and her finding her father in that hospital ward in London. If you had an awkward adolescence (particularly in the 1970s) and struggled to fit in while struggling to be yourself, this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book with Broad Cross-Over Appeal
Review: I just bought this book in Hawaii yesterday and read it all the way back to Baltimore with Israel Kamakawiwo'le (Bradda IZ) live-in-concert CD playing on my portable CD player. The combination brought Yanamaka's beautiful, poignant and powerful dialogue alive for me. This book resonated for me in so many ways -- as an African American tourist in an island where there was complex commingling and separation of the ethnic groups as well as a heirarchical order to the society based on ethnic origin and appearance. I also identified with the book as a daughter of Jamaican immigrants who carefully spoke in "correct" English to their children but spoke Jamaican patois (the equivalent of Lovey's pidgin, Creole Hawaiian) with each other and with family members. I picked up early on that how you sound and how you look affects your standing in society and now speak perfect English but mourn my inability to speak patois. So I empathize with Lovey's despair of every being able to speak perfect haole English. But what probably got me the most was Yanamaka's hauntingly detailed description of Lovey's rapture with Shirley Temple's Heidi. It resonated strongly with my childhood love of Shirley's perfect ringlets, cherubic smile, and her love for Grandpa and her finding her father in that hospital ward in London. If you had an awkward adolescence (particularly in the 1970s) and struggled to fit in while struggling to be yourself, this is the book for you.
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Summary: one of the most amusing books i've ever read
Review: I loved this book. I have read all of her books and this is by far my favorite book. In fact it is the only book of hers that I would recommend reading.. I moved away from hawaii in 1996 and am still regretting it. Not only did this book bring back lots of fun memories of mine from living there, it captures aspects of hawaiian culture beautifully. I read this book a couple times a year (thats more than I go to church) each time I have reread this book, I am amazed at the beauty, warmth, humor and pain that yamanaka captures through her words. In their own way, I think we can all relate to the characters in her book.. for anyone who has a soft spot in their heart for hawaii... I highly recommend this book!!!
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Summary: More realistic than some true stories I've read!
Review: I read a lot...and when I read Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers, I was opened to a whole new kind of fiction. never before have I read any fiction on my life time where I actually understood the actions of many of the characters. The dress, the traits, the dialogue...everything...were things I actually could relate to. Perhaps it's because I'm from a Pacific Island...but it wasn't just the dialogue...it was also how the story was written. Rather than go by the basic past to present type of fiction...it was like I was reading parts of the speaker's diary. It was almost as if she was jotting down stuff as if they came to her mind just then.Very few writers have the ability to make the reader empathize with the characters. Lois-Ann Yamanaka did a wonderful job of making me more aware of my culture
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Summary: Excellent look at growing up in a unequal world
Review: I really enjoyed Wild meat and bully burgers. It is real, it shows the cruelty and pains of growing up and the tension caused by unequal economic and social standing. It has humor and it captures the reality of growing up in a foreign place and what it means to be an outsider.
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Summary: Whatevas, Lovey.
Review: I was so amazed by this book when I first read it 3 years ago I have re-read and re-read it since. It vibrates with texture, reality, and wit, and has the power to bring tears to my eyes, as well as make me laugh out loud. I recommend this book to anyone who's sick of false and gooey accounts of culture, stiff characters, and weak language. Get ready for Lovey Nariyoshi, a girl who is definitely for real.
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Summary: Growing up poor in Hawaii
Review: Lois Ann Yamanaka's voice is forceful, vibrant and original, and her female heroine, Lovey Nariyoski, a 12-year old with something to say, grabs our attention as well as our hearts, as she describes the details of her life and her working class family. She yearns to be a "Haole" (white) and live in a house that uses bendable straws for every drink. She is embarrassed when she first gets her period. She watches as her father kills animals for food or skins and her descriptions of the details of their slaughter are straightforward and unflinching. All of the dialogue is in pidgin. I didn't understand every word, but the language was necessary to get the flavor of the islands. I suspect that many of the chapters were originally written as short pieces because then tend to be complete in themselves, and basically tell the story of growing up poor in Hawaii.
Rating:
Summary: Growing up poor in Hawaii
Review: Lois Ann Yamanaka's voice is forceful, vibrant and original, and her female heroine, Lovey Nariyoski, a 12-year old with something to say, grabs our attention as well as our hearts, as she describes the details of her life and her working class family. She yearns to be a "Haole" (white) and live in a house that uses bendable straws for every drink. She is embarrassed when she first gets her period. She watches as her father kills animals for food or skins and her descriptions of the details of their slaughter are straightforward and unflinching. All of the dialogue is in pidgin. I didn't understand every word, but the language was necessary to get the flavor of the islands. I suspect that many of the chapters were originally written as short pieces because then tend to be complete in themselves, and basically tell the story of growing up poor in Hawaii.
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