What to Read This February: 5 Hawai‘i Book Picks Recommended by Local Experts
We reached out to our friends at Da Shop: Books + Curiosities to ask their community of writers and readers for their picks: a Newbery-winning Korean folk tale, a memoir, a murder case and more.
February 2, 2021
by Juliet S. Kono
Anshu is a singular achievement, a novel that captures better than most the unique suffering of a people, a place and a time through the experience of a single character. Himiko Aoki’s life is a study of woe, from her humble Big Island beginnings and an out-of-wedlock pregnancy that leads to challenges in Japan, culminating in her joining the ranks of the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Throughout her trials, you will suffer along with Himiko, but gradually, almost imperceptibly, you will eventually find peace with her at the peak of her misfortune at the end of a quintessentially Buddhist journey. Juliet S. Kono has given me in