Kipuka: Finding Refuge in Times of Change

Collection of diverse voices explore the challenges of growing up and living in contemporary Hawai'i.

Edited by Donald Carreira Ching, Meredith Desha Enos, Brenda Kwon, and Misty-Lynn Sanico. This special issue of Bamboo Ridge is a sampling of local literature two decades into the 21st century, during a period of unprecedented economic stress, pervasive uncertainty, natural disasters, and climate change adding to sociopolitical upheaval--and a pandemic. The call for submissions to this anthology referenced Kilauea's 2018 eruption, a reminder that renewal and erasure are natural law. Work on this book progressed while a global health crisis burgeoned. The collection includes pandemic writing by established local favorites Darrell H. Y. Lum, Juliet S. Kono, R. Zamora Linmark, and award-winning poet and critical care nurse Christy Passion. It also embraces emerging writers, such as Kaua'i High English teacher Jonathon Medeiros, who, when schools closed during the 2020 lockdown, started writing poetry every night with his wife and young daughters. Interspersed with writing by almost forty authors are color images of artwork by four Native Hawaiian artists whose creations range from sculpture and collage to murals and painted trees. Kipuka explores the challenges of growing up and living in contemporary Hawai'i and chronicles historic times.

"When volcanoes erupt, variances in topography create kipuka, islands of turf untouched by the flow of lava. While Pele's fiery rivers caress its borders, its plants and seeds remain. It watches lava cool, then blacken. It witnesses pihoehoe break down into rich volcanic soil. And when the time comes, it seeds its surroundings, sets free former boundaries as genesis and legacy join. Ni kipuka preserve and regenerate. They survive and persist. They anchor and hold life, ensuring in the end that nothing is forgotten. It is in this spirit of what holds us in times of change that we present to you the work of writers and artists who explore and engage where kipuka lies for them."--Editors' note

Fiction. Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies.