About the Book:
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

“This book is dizzy and alive with the Filipino soul. Read at your own risk!”
— Karin Aguilar-San Juan, editor of The State of Asian America

Theodore Gonzalves

"Stage Presence: Conversations with Filipino American Performing Artists," edited by Theodore S. Gonzalves, is an anthology featuring 10 leading artists based in the United States. Through interviews and personal essays, the contributors discuss highlights of their careers as musicians, theater artists and choreographers. The volume features an insightful foreword by scholar and musician Ricardo D. Trimillos."

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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.

Dennis M. Ogawa

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.

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Honolulu gears up for national arts, humanities month.

Mayor Mufi Hannemann will proclaim October as "National Arts and Humanities Month in Honolulu" at a signing ceremony set for tomorrow afternoon. A proclamation inviting everyone to visit a museum, art gallery or historic site in Honolulu, will be presented to Betty Kam, president of the Hawaii Museums Association, during a 2:15 p.m. ceremony in the mayor's office.

"I welcome this opportunity to support Hawai'i's artists, performers, museums and galleries because our cultural assets must be promoted, enhanced and renewed to protect our cultural identity," Hannemann said in a news release.

"Our host culture's music and arts, fused with that of the many ethnic groups that migrated here, have blessed us with a unique contemporary Hawaiian culture that the city is committed to sustaining. With this proclamation, I encourage everyone to embrace the arts in October and make it an activity to enjoy and share with family and friends."

The City and County of Honolulu and Hawaii Museums Association are among hundreds of arts organizations in America to be a part of NAHM — the largest annual celebration of the arts and humanities in the nation.

Since 1993, this annual event has encouraged Americans to renew or begin a lifelong habit of active participation in the arts and humanities. The celebration grew out of National Arts Week, which was started in 1985 by the National Endowment for the Arts and Americans for the Arts.

For a listing of select museums and historic sites in Honolulu visit hawaiimuseums.org.

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Congratulations to Dennis Ogawa

Professor Dennis Ogawa was one of the four recepients of the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii's 2007 Leadership and Achievement Award for their contributions to Hawaii's academic community at the "Celebration of Leadershipship and Achievement Dinner" on September 29, 2007 in the Hilton Hawaii Village Coral Ballroom. The other honorees were: Jane O. Komeiji, Dr. Richard H. Kosaki and Dr. Margaret Y. Oda.

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NEWS

Professor Mari Yoshihara wins mentoring award

The University of Hawai'i at Manoa Graduate Division has announced its 2007 Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award will go to Mari Yoshihara, associate professor and graduate chair of the American Studies Department. The award allows graduate students to nominate faculty for excellent mentoring, one of the foundations of outstanding graduate education.

Read more in the Honolulu Advertiser June 20, 2007.

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PHILIPPINE STUDIES PRIZE GOES TO CHERYL BEREDO

The Philippine Studies Prize for the best paper presented at the 18th SHAPS (School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies) Graduate Student Conference was awarded to Cheryl Beredo, a doctoral student in the Department of American Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa. She received a cash award of $150 from the Center for Philippine Studies.

Beredo wrote her paper entitled, "Transformation and Recognition in Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo," on the topic of Philippine national hero, Jose Rizal and his novels' critique of colonialism. The paper takes off from scholar Caroline Hau's concept of transformation of the "revolutionary Filipino 'body' in Philippine nationalist discourse." It also draws from Paul Kramer's research on "the politics of recognition" in United States colonial discourse.

Beredo is a Filipino American student born and raised in New Jersey. She holds degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Cornell University. This summer, she is going to the Philippines with the Advanced Filipino Abroad Program for language training and fieldwork. She expects to complete her doctoral dissertation next year.

For more information, contact the Center for Philippine Studies, UH Manoa, Moore Hall 415, 1890 East-West Road, Honolulu HI 96822; phone: (808) 956-6086; fax: (808) 956-2682; and e-mail: cps@hawaii.edu.

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The University of Hawaii Board of Regents (BOR) formally approved the establishment of a Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals. The chair will be jointly held in the Department of American Studies, College of Arts & Humanities, and the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii Foundation.

The chair is named for U.S. Senator Dan Inouye and his wife Maggie, for their many years of outstanding public service and contributions to Hawaii and the nation. Chair holders will rotate and be selected from distinguished public figures, who will offer courses and seminars for the benefit of students, faculty, alumni and the community. A campaign to raise private funds to endow the chair led by Walter Dods, Chairman of First Hawaiian Bank, Jeffrey Watanabe, Managing Partner of Watanabe Ing Kawashima & Komeiji LLP, and UH Interim president David McClain, have netted $2.3 million.

This chair in democratic ideals recognizes the long years of public service by Senator Inouye and his wife, Maggie, and for their strong support and promotion of democratic ideals, said Kitty Lagareta, BOR Chairperson. Senator Inouye has not only upheld and practiced democratic ideals in his distinguished career in Congress, but, as a decorated combat veteran.

Maggie has worked side by side with her husband in many capacities, including co-chairing the statewide Ready to Learn program that successfully provided school supplies to needy families. An alumna of UH, she has also served the people of Hawaii in the field of education, working at UH-Manoa as a speech instructor and later as an educational instructor, Lagareta said.

Inouye, the third most senior member of the U.S. Senate, is known for his distinguished record as a legislative leader, and as a World War II combat veteran who earned the nation's highest award for military valor, the Medal of Honor. Although he was thrust into the limelight in the 1970s as a member of the Watergate Committee and in 1987 as Chairman of the Iran-Contra Committee, he has also quietly made his mark as a respected legislator able to work in a bipartisan fashion to enact meaningful legislation.

As the ranking Democrat on the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Inouye has been able to focus on defense matters that strengthen national security, and enhance the quality of life for military personnel and their families. He has also championed the interests of Hawaii's people throughout his career. He was instrumental in engineering the restoration and return of Kahoolawe, the island that had been used for target practice by the U.S. military, to the State of Hawaii.

Senator Inouye was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962 and is now serving his eighth consecutive term. When Hawaii became a state in 1959, he was elected the first Congressman from the new state, and was re-elected to a full term in 1960.

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updated July 1, 2008