Univeristy of Hawaii American Studies Publications

Dennis M. Ogawa

"California Hotel and Casino: Hawai'i's Home Away from Home," by Dennis M. Ogawa and John M. Blink with Mike Gordon

"[This is] the story of how the California Hotel grew from an unattractive property in a run-down section of Las Vegas to become the must-visit destination for Hawai`i gamblers, whose special relationship with the hotel was forged in its first decade of business--1975 to 1985. . . . [It's] told largely through the voice of John Blink, who was a witness to the powerful connection Sam Boyd created between the California Hotel and Hawai`i's gamblers. But it also includes personal recollections from people who worked in Hawai`i and the hotel. Together, they offer insights, memories, and opinions on what made the hotel an oasis of aloha in a depressed corner of Las Vegas. The early chapters, which provide the background and the events that led to the opening of the hotel in 1975, introduce the reader to Boyd and describe his growing mentorship of Blink. Subsequent chapters chronicle the California Hotel's shaky start and the business decisions that turned it into a profitable casino beyond everyone's dreams. They describe a place so popular that guests routinely say the best times to see old friends--sometimes the only times they ever see them--are at weddings, funerals, and at the California Hotel." --from the Introduction by Dennis M. Ogawa

Heather A. Diamond

"American Aloha: Cultural Tourism and the Negotiation of Tradition"
Based on archival research and extensive interviews with festival organizers and participants, this innovative cross-disciplinary study uncovers the behind-the-scenes negotiations and processes that inform the national spectacle of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1989.

Intersecting the fields of museum studies, folklore studies, Hawaiian studies, performance studies, cultural studies and American studies, American Aloha supplies a nuanced analysis of how the carefully crafted staging of Hawai'i’s cultural diversity was used to serve a national narrative of utopian multiculturalism—one that collapsed social inequities and tensions, masked colonial history, and subordinated indigenous politics—while empowering Hawai'i’s traditional artists and providing a model for cultural tourism that has had long-lasting effects.

Diamond deftly positions the 1989 program within a history of institutional intervention in the traditional arts of Hawai'i’s ethnic groups as well as in relation to local cultural revivals and the tourist industry. By tracing the planning, fieldwork, site design, performance and aftermath stages of the program, she examines the uneven processes through which local culture is transformed into national culture and raises questions about the stakes involved in cultural tourism for both culture bearers and culture brokers.

Theodore Gonzalves

Stage Presence

"Stage Presence: Conversations with Filipino American Performing Artists," edited by Theodore S. Gonzalves

Stage Presence is a collection of essays and interviews with Filipino American performing artists. Each of the chapters features critically acclaimed and popular artists in their own right, who have also mentored hundreds of dancers, comedians, theater artists and musicians of all genres. In this rare collection, performers take time off stage to speak candidly about their creative processes, revealing personal frustrations and triumphs, while testifying to the challenges of what it could mean to be an artist of Filipino descent working and living in the United States.

Featuring: musicians Eleanor Academia, Gabe Baltazar Jr., Danongan Kalanduyan; bandleader and poet Jessica Hagedorn; choreographers and dancers Joel Jacinto, Alleluia Panis, and Pearl Ubungen; and theater artists Remé Grefalda, Allan Manalo and Ralph Peña. The book features a thought-provoking foreword by scholar and musician, Ricardo D. Trimillos.

“... one big happening jam session featuring performing artists rapping on their craft, their process, their defiance to be boxed in by the category-obsessed American market, and their hunger and struggles necessary to stay true to their vision, identity, and art.”
— R. Zamora Linmark, author of Rolling the R’s, Prime Time Apparitions and Leche

“... an inspiring and dynamic range of practices encompassing everything from kulintang to head-banging heavy metal, from college PCNs to off-Broadway New York theatre, from the Bayanihan to site- specific performance art.”
— Karen Shimakawa, author of National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage

Mari Yoshihara

"Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music"
Musicians of Asian descent enjoy unprecedented prominence in concert halls, conservatories, and classical music performance competitions. In the first book on the subject, Mari Yoshihara looks into the reasons for this phenomenon, starting with her own experience of learning to play piano in Japan at the age of three. Yoshihara shows how a confluence of culture, politics and commerce after the war made classical music a staple in middle-class households, established Yamaha as the world's largest producer of pianos and gave the Suzuki method of music training an international clientele. Soon, talented musicians from Japan, China and South Korea were flocking to the United States to study and establish careers, and Asian American families were enrolling toddlers in music classes.

Against this historical backdrop, Yoshihara interviews Asian and Asian American musicians, such as Cho-Liang Lin, Margaret Leng Tan, Kent Nagano, who have taken various routes into classical music careers. They offer their views about the connections of race and culture and discuss whether the music is really as universal as many claim it to be. Their personal histories and Yoshihara's observations present a snapshot of today's dynamic and revived classical music scene.

Joseph Stanton

"Stan Musial" is a biography of the former Cardinals' slugger written by University of Hawai'i Professor Joseph Stanton.

A historian by training and baseball fan by heart, Professor Stanton's version of the American masters includes Stan Musial. The St. Louis Cardinals' Hall of Fame slugger being both a boyhood hero from his days in Overland, Mo. and the subject of a recent biography, "Stan Musial", for Greenwood Press' Baseball's All-Time Greatest Hitters series. To read more of this story, link to Honolulu Advertiser.

Manoa Professor Dennis M. Ogawa published "First Among Nisei: The Life and Writings of Masaji Marumoto."

One of Hawai'is most distinguished Nisei, Marumoto was the first person of Asian ancestry to graduate from Harvard Law School, the first Japanese American president of the Hawai'i Bar Association and the first Japanese American to serve on the Hawai'i Supreme Court.

Primarily based on Marumotos oral histories, First Among Nisei is an account of his life and careerfrom the time he was a child until he was well into his retirement years in the mid-1980s.

This volume includes portions of a diary Marumoto kept as a 14-year-old schoolboy and letters to his wife and son during his World War II military service. It is an intimate portrait of a remarkable individuala figure of major consequence in the story of modern Hawai'i.

First Among Nisei: The Life and Writings of Masaji Marumoto is available through UH Press. To read more go to News at UH.