Customer Reviews

Da Word

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Here's another great book of short stories written entirely in pidgin. Don't be intimidated by pidgin - once you get the hang of it after reading the first couple of stories, you will be zipping right along (after which you can go back and read the first couple over again)! Winner of an Academy of American Poets award (among others), Tonouchi is also the "Sales and Marketing Guy" at the well-respected Bamboo Press as well as of his own magazine "Hybolics." Tonouchi has been pushing pidgin "to da max" for a while now. When asked about pidgin being a block to individual success in modern Hawai`i, he gleefully points out that he wrote his college papers in it (yes, he graduated), and filled out his employment applications for both the Bamboo Ridge Press and for an instructor position at Kapiolani Community College in it (yes, he got both jobs). He thoroughly enjoys his role as "Da Pidgin Guerilla."

Wat? You wan me stay tell you `bout da book? Kay den. It's great! There are 13 different short stories, some of which form a series and some don't. The subjects are the kinds of things that most all of us went through in high school or college. You know - hangin` out with the gang, trying to get the courage up to ask a girl to dance, dealing with your girlfriend going somewhere else (than where you were) for the summer, and da kine. Tonouchi gets out some really great lines in each story. Often, if he uses a pidgin word that you might not understand, he quickly uses it again in another context to give you more clues. One of the funniest stories involves a girlfriend who is a Star Trek nut. So... Randall and Lea go to da Star Trek convention, eh. An den Randall says, "I neva know had da kine Oriental Vulcans! I guess so cuz on Voyager get da Popolo [Black] Vulcan now, so guess nowdays anybody can be one Vulcan." And on and on and on. It's great fun.

There is some social commentary woven into "da word," but it's very skillfully done and usually humorous. After all, pidgin didn't exactly come out of the boardrooms in Honolulu, now did it? So, dat boddah you? Too bad! Jus keeding, brah - no want beef. This is definitely and "inside job" - written by a hip author who is fully a part of the culture of which he speaks. Good stuffs!

It took me a while to get used to the pidgin style, but then the stories moved liked butter. The pidgin is so intimate and friendly. The stories were from the heart and infused with humor and soul. I recommend this book to everyone. Just be patient if you don't know pidgin. It's worth the time. Go Lee! Free Hawaii!