Kikkawa has been researching Hawaiʻi history, including criminal history, for a series of novels set in the 1950s. His first book, "Kona Winds," is a detective noir set in a very flavorful Honolulu.
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by Lisa Linn Kanae
Islands Linked by Ocean is more than a collection of Hawai‘i-based short stories: It’s the verbal equivalent of a heavy, glossy coffee table book full of in-the-moment images imbued with a unique elegance and wonder by the artist who captured them. Lisa Linn Kanae conjures frame after frame, many familiar to most of us, but in a light that brings out a grace we never knew existed: a veteran steersman berating his novice stroker, the banter and gossip of women in an office breakroom, a starving dog tied to a chain-link fence behind a dumpster. My own favorite is the title story which ironically contains the least amount of fiction maybe because I, too, had a McKinley-alum dad who could croon like Dean Martin. And I never realized how beautifully he did so until I read Kanae’s work about her own father.
What to Read This May: 5 Hawai‘i Book Picks Recommended by Local Experts
It’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! We reached out to our friends at Da Shop: Books + Curiosities to ask their community of writers and readers for their picks honoring AAPI voices.
May 4, 2021
by Joakim Peter and James Skouge
Coconut Ratz & Kung Fu Cowboys is not simply a book it is an experience. Readers are transported to Jojo Peter’s home of Ettal in the Federated States of Micronesia’s Mortlock Islands. Seen from above, the islands resemble “a flower lei draped atop a royal blue cape” and are a vibrant setting for the beginning and ending of this book.