Center for Oral History presents Talking Hawai'i's Story at festival

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
M Kodama-Nishimoto, (808) 956-6165
Rsch Assoc, Ctr for Oral History, Social Science Research Institute
Warren Nishimoto, (808) 956-6260
Director, Center for Oral History, Social Science Research Institute
Posted: May 18, 2010

Narratives from Talking Hawaiʻi's Story: Oral Histories of an Island People were paired with readings from Bamboo Ridge at a special taping of "Aloha Shorts" at the Hawaiʻi Book and Music Festival on Sunday, May 16, at the Mission Memorial Auditorium in Honolulu.
 
The program included excerpts from the oral history of Venicia Damasco Guiala, a Lanai pineapple field worker, read by Donalyn Dela Cruz, paired with Amalia Bueno's humorous "On Hearing My Mother Call Out To Our Neighbor Over The Courtyard Fence" performed by Kiana Rivera.  Dann Seki voiced the words of well-known labor leader Robert Kiyoshi Hasegawa, framed by two poems by Juliet S. Kono, "Grandmother and the War" and "Wartime," both read by Kat Koshi. The Bamboo Ridge piece "Hawaiʻi, Plantation of Memory" by Virgilio Felipe and read by Troy Apostal was paired with the oral history narrative of Severo Dinson read by Wayland Quintero. Lemon "Rusty" Holt's kolohe tales of his youth in Waikīkī, read by Wil Kahele, were followed by Moses Goods III's reading of Michael McPherson's "The Long Swim."
 
Talking Hawaiʻi's Story: Oral Histories of an Island People, edited by the UH Mānoa Center for Oral History's (COH) Michi Kodama-Nishimoto, Warren S. Nishimoto, and Cynthia A. Oshiro, won honorable mention in the non-fiction category of the Hawaiʻi Book Publishers Association's Ka Palapala Po`okela Awards.  The awards honor the best books published in 2009. Talking Hawaiʻi's Story is published by the University of Hawaiʻi Press for COH and the Biographical Research Center.
 
"Aloha Shorts" is a locally produced radio program of writings from Bamboo Ridge Press performed by Hawai'i actors.  The shows usually tape before a live audience on the first Sunday of every month and are broadcast every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. on Hawaiʻi Public Radio.  Podcasts are available for download at Aloha Shorts. The program is co-produced by Sammie Choy, Craig Howes, and Phyllis Look. Tapings and broadcasts are sponsored in part by the Hawaiʻi Council for the Humanities.