The spring 1990 issue features new fiction, poetry and oral narratives from Papua New Guinea, brought together by two guest editors: Darlaine Mahealani Dudoit and David M. Roskies. With more than 800 languages, the literature and oral traditions of Papua New Guinea are more than we could hope to represent comprehensively. Instead, we have made selections, primarily in English, which we think invite comparison with American writing, particularly with our offering of American fiction.
American social, political, and philosophical issues are embraced in this issue in the fiction of Ian Macmillan and the satire of Ursule Molinaro, and in the remarkable, true tale of Reverend Thich Thong Hai. Also in this issue are war stories by Tim O’Brien, a chapbook titled Butcher Scrapsby Faye Kicknosway, poetry by Cole Swensen and Norman Dubie, as well as new work by poets from Hawai‘i and from across America.
The art consists of a portfolio of Hawai‘i photographs by New Englander David Ulrich, who remarks on his vision of the Hawaiian islands in “Hawai‘i: Landscape of Transformation.”
Spring 1990 (vol. 2, no. 1)
183 pages
“When
Okonkwo committed suicide
We refused to touch the body
That was impure. Left it to
The Vultures and Crows
Carry on with the Pacification Rites,
And we drove on to the hills of Taworakawa
And Rewai, where sidelong lofty glances
Were cast at the now emptied fields,
And at men that groped along the veins of
Rivers that flow back”
—from “Pacification Rites” by Russell Soaba
“Although the mad governor of South Merdeka had been dead for over 40 years—he had hanged himself when he was finally apprehended; hanging allegedly tenderized the flesh; his tenderized corpse had been fed to the flesh-eating animals in the South Merdeka zoo, in mock application of his rehabilitation program—the stigma of cannibalism continued to brand his state, & all those who lived there. Or came from there. Especially if they were old enough to have voted him into office, & to have lived during the decade & a half when he passed the legislation that forced people to ‘Eat Their Own.’”
—from “Merdeka Forever” by Ursule Molinaro
“It was his one eccentricity. The panty hose, he said, had the properties of a good luck charm. He liked putting his nose into the nylon and breathing in the scent of his girlfriend's body; he liked the memories this inspired; he sometimes slept with the stockings up against his face, the way an infant sleeps with a magic blanket, secure and peaceful. More than anything, though, the stockings were a talisman for him. They kept him safe.”
—from “Stockings” by Tim O’Brien
Devastation
Trail, Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park
Photograph by David Ulrich
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David Ulrich chairs the photography department of the Art Institute of Boston. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States as well as in The Netherlands and Peru and is in various collections, including those of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University. He first came to Hawai‘i in 1985, and the photographs in this issue are part of a project that, he says, “rapidly took on an urgency and intensity, drawing me back again and again.” |
About the editors: David M. Roskies currently heads the Department of Language and Literature at the University of Papua New Guinea.
Darlaine Mahealani MuiLan Dudoit is the managing editor of MANOA. Born and raised in Hawai'i, she is of Chinese-Hawaiian-English-Irish-Portuguese-French ancestry.