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As the temperature rises, and joins the humidity in making it feel as though summer is here, even though it won’t peak until August, I’m so very grateful that our book club doesn’t require a particular dress code, like the ton’s. It will be way more fun to discuss Julia Quinn’s The Duke and I with the benefit of air conditioning and pajamas modern clothing. You do not need to faire votre toilette to join in the conversation on Friday, June 10th at 7:30pm CST, but you do need to RSVP here to let us know you’ll be joining Heart.Wants.Books. and friends.
While this month’s first and last titles have been on our radar for a while, last week’s and this week’s are titles we purposefully searched out. In selecting our titles, we wanted only titles by authors who are Asian American and Pacific Islander, and we wanted different cultures to be represented. As part of this, we wanted to include a native Hawaiian author because Moana and Lilo inspire us and we felt it important to include that representation in our reading this month. We should not have been surprised at the lack of native Hawaiian authors accessible to us in our library systems, but I at least was. Darling readers, I recommended SO. MANY. BOOKS. To my local electronic library because the selection was abysmal. We searched for lists and authors and truly struggled to find a Kindle book that met our reading tastes (which are fairly wide) and allowed us a window into the life of a native Hawaiian. We did find some options though, partially thanks to our Kindle Unlimited subscriptions, and are thoroughly pleased with the results. Read on to see what we think of this week’s title that we searched and searched for, and I do not mean the pages of my holds, this was intense y’all, ridiculously so.
Mysteries of Honolulu by Robert Lopaka Kapanui is a collection of short stories, including both factual and fictional inspiration of mysterious happenings on the islands of Hawai‘i. These stories are compact, yet complete, carefully crafted, and picturesque. I’m actually torn as to whether I think this title is best suited to summer, with the descriptions of beaches, oceans, and lush vegetation, or fall for the supernatural happenings, but truly, a cool summer night around a small fire might be the perfect way to go, and you could definitely read this thin collection in one sitting by said fire, if you want to. (I didn’t, I savored it over a few days and really liked it!)
Kapanui includes a group of characters who seem so real, despite the few pages a reader spends with most, and saves his most fun story for last. Each character and scene felt so well developed that I had a clear visual in my head, but the movie I want to see is really the final story, which makes up nearly 40% of the 111 pages. Mysteries of Honolulu includes stories of ghosts, shadow warriors, odd happenings, deities, and loads of insights into Hawaiian culture and customs. I’m giving this title four solid stars for a fun collection of short stories that are incredibly well written, engaging, and also culturally enlightening. I doubt I’ll read it again, but I’m very interested in his second volume which was released this spring. Perhaps that’s the one I’ll save for hanging out by a fire!
What’s one title you’ve enjoyed that seems to belong to a particular season?
~Nikki
Lopaka Kapanui’s family’s legends, history, customs, and protocol were passed down the traditional Hawaiian way, from “mouth to ear,” or mo’olelo. It was not just the stories themselves that he learned at the knees of his mother and Aunty, but that he has the responsibility as the recipient of these stories to pass them down to the next generation of his family. In 1994 Kapanui met his mentor on a ghost tour, historian and author Glen Grant. In the years up until Grant’s death in 2003, Kapanui absorbed Grant’s exacting research ethic, cross checking every story and fact to the best of his abilities. Kapanui created his own ghost tour business after Grant’s passing, calling it Ghosts of Old Honolulu, then renaming it Mysteries of Honolulu, and finally transitioning to its current iteration in Mysteries of Hawai’i, expanding his storytelling and tours beyond Oahu and onto neighboring islands. Because of his writing, storytelling, and cultural impact to his island home, the Hawaiian State Legislature publicly honored him for his contributions in March 2020. In addition to all of these storytelling pursuits, Kapanui is an actor, kumu hula, cultural practitioner, former professional wrestler, husband, father, and grandpa.
If I didn’t already want to travel to Hawai’i (I mean, who doesn’t!) these short, somewhat spooky tales in Mysteries of Honolulu would have given me the desire. I definitely want the opportunity to experience Kapanui’s storytelling in person on one of his ghost tours for sure. I already love a good ghost tour, it’s more about the historical facts and nighttime walk-about a city that gets me going more so than the supernatural tales, so the fact that these stories are inspired by or used on a tour is icing on the cake. Not surprisingly, I didn’t have any highlights in this book as it is a short 111 page collection of stories, so I don’t have much to discuss. My one critique is that I would have appreciated a good footnoted translation of some of the Hawaiian language bits as I struggled through that dialogue or the use of random words. I could not figure out most of them from context clues and it often left me a little frustrated. Ya girl has got the romance languages figured out with cognate use, but native Hawaiian…not even a little bit. Thanks to movies my Hawaiian words are aloha, mahalo, ohana, hula, and kahuna. That’s rather abysmal, truth be told.
Mysteries of Honolulu gets 4 stars from me. I am so glad I read it. I’m so glad Nikki and I took the time to search out a native Hawaiian author telling tales of native Hawaiian culture and history, even if some of the characters are of a supernatural bent. Plus, I learned why Hawaiian children are taught to respect the items of others and to never touch someone’s things without the express permission of the owner. Like Nikki, my favorite story was the final one, and she’s right when saying it would make an excellent movie – I hope Kapanui works on his screen play soon! I, too, am looking forward to reading his second book, Mysteries of Hawai’i: Na Mo’olelo Lapu, a collection of stories of true hauntings in Hawai’i, and the raising of chicken skin all over my body while I read.
~Ashley
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