Another of Mānoa's pleasures comes from the unique writing. For instance, a story by Chinese author Yan Lianke, “The Crow,” has magical metaphors: Day after day, life slid by like silk. . . . The days were flowing ahead smoothly and calmly like water in a bay. . . . The crow drifted over to the kiln like a rising wind. Using its one wing as a crutch, it stood on the grave mound. It raised its walnut-sized head high and kept belting out half-black, half-purple cries -- cries like the breaking of bricks. In the blink of an eye, it shook the air in the village and the mountain so much that the air began swelling and flowing like a raging fire. Poets translate the work. If it is our goal to respect other cultures, how can we do it without first looking to see who’s there?
In “The Legend” by Chu Van, a Vietnamese singer and her soldier (who are separated by war) create time and space for a reunion. The reader will find himself pulling for the lovers as though from their own longing rather than through a glass, and sharing an experience with Vietnam that only literature written by countrymen can bring.
In Maps of Reconciliation: Literature and the Ethical Imagination, Mānoa’s most recent issue, contributors range from Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga people of western New York, to the director of the writing program at the University of Iowa. It includes highly acclaimed writers from Bengal to California, from Vancouver to Australia, from South Africa to Hawaii, from Argentina to China, Mongolia, Germany, Nepal, Vietnam, and France. In addition to ethnic voices, this issue brings voices of elders, such as the statement Oren Lyons delivered to the United Nations in August, 2000: “The Ice Is Melting in the North.”
The literature and photographic essays of Mānoa give voice and recognition to people from non-English speaking countries as well as people who aren’t well known within our own borders. Choices made within the United States affect these people, but without hearing those affected, choices grow from limited imaginations and lack sensitivity. In this way, Mānoa is not art for art’s sake but a collection of truth.
About the author:Gay Davis is a screenwriter and poet who divides her time between Kauai, Hawai'i, and Austin, Texas.
Sources for the stories mentioned:
Van, Chu. “The Legend.” Mercury Rising: Contemporary Poetry from Taiwan, Mānoa 15:1, ed. Frank Stewart, Arthur Sze, Michelle Yeh, trans. Nam Son and Wayne Karlin. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003, 1–6.
Lianke, Yan. “The Crow,” Maps of Reconciliation: Literature and the Ethical Imagination, Mānoa 19:2, ed. Frank Stewart, Barry Lopez, trans. Karen Gernant and Chen Aeping. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007, 36–49.
