YAMANAKA, Lois-Ann

Born 7 September 1961, Ho'olchua, Molokai, Hawaii

Daughter of Harry and Jean Yamanaka; married John Inferrera; children: John

Lois-Ann Yamanaka was raised in the sugar plantation town of Pahala, Hawaii, by Japanese American parents. Yamanaka, the eldest of four daughters, grew up speaking pidgin, the dialect of working-class Hawaiians, as her first language. Formally known as Hawaii Creole English, pidgin originated with the influx of immigrant laborers from Japan, China, and the Philippines during the 19th century. Despite the fact that her mother was a teacher and her father a school administrator turned taxidermist, Yamanaka felt inferior to middle-class Japanese Americans who did not speak pidgin.

Yamanaka received a B.A. in education from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1983 and a masters in education from the same university in 1987. She credits poet Morgan Blair, one of her instructors, with helping her to overcome her fear of writing in pidgin. Blair introduced her to African American writers like Ntozake Shange and Thulani Davis who successfully wrote in dialect. Yamanaka was also encouraged by the members of Bamboo Ridge, a literary publishing collective formed in 1978 to encourage works by local-born authors of all ethnicities. Yamanaka's first book, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre (1993) is a collection of four verse novellas whose narrators are working-class Hawaiian teenagers. This debut work explores many of the issues Yamanaka is know for throughout her writ-ing—ethnic identity, sexual development, peer pressure, self-hatred, and drug use. Yamanaka received critical praise for her first book and won several awards, including the Asian American Studies National Book Award, a Carnegie Foundation grant, and a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship, enabling her to take a sabbatical from her teaching position in order to write full time. She received a Pushcart Prize the same year for her novella Yarn Wig. Yet many Hawaiian educators criticized Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre for its use of pidgin and its profanity. Of particular concern to educators was a passage in which a young girl repeats local stereotypes about Filipino men. Yamanaka was uninvited from several speaking engagements and her book was banned at many Hawaiian schools.

Yamanaka's next work, Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers (1996), is told in the pidgin dialect of narrator Lovey Nariyoshi, a Japanese American teenager in Hilo, Hawaii, during the 1970s. The story, which consists of a series of loosely collected anecdotes, revolves around Lovey's desire to be thin and Caucasian like the teen idols in her fan magazines. Yamanaka's other works also reveal the extent to which American culture has pervaded Hawaiian youth and replaced adherence to the traditions and customs of many ethnic groups with an affection for pop music, fast food, and Hollywood movies. Like Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre, Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers also explores issues of class and ethnicity. Racism among different ethnic groups is a theme throughout the book as Lovey picks on a young Filipino girl in order to feel better about herself. Although Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers was nominated for an Asian American Studies National Book Award, criticism of the book within the association was so fierce no award was granted in 1996.

Yamanaka's third book, Blu's Hanging (1997), centers on its thirteen-year-old narrator, Ivah Ogata, her eight-year-old brother Blu, and her five-year-old sister, Maisie. The plot focuses on their attempts to come to terms with both their mother's death and their poverty-stricken lives. Ivah, who narrates in pidgin, watches helplessly as her father turns to drugs, Blu is sexually abused and develops an eating disorder, and Maisie quits speaking. The book's criminal and morally bankrupt characters are both Filipino and Japanese, which made Yamanaka's critics furious. She was awarded the 1998 Asian American Studies National Book Award for Blu's Hanging against her detractors' wishes, but the award was rescinded almost immediately.

Heads by Harry (1999) is another of Yamanaka's coming-of-age in Hawaii tales and has the most richly drawn characters of her books to date. The title takes its name from the Yagyuu family's taxidermy shop in Hilo. Sixteen-year-old underachiever Toni Yagyuu is from an offbeat but primarily stable family. The book, which is narrated in pidgin, revolves around Toni's relationship with her homosexual older brother, Sheldon, and beautiful younger sister, Bunny, who dreams of marrying a haole (Cauca-sian). The siblings grow older and share an apartment at college. Toni deals with a host of unexpected problems, including addiction, pregnancy, and poor grades. Like many of Yamanaka's characters, Toni has a wry sense of humor that sustains her throughout her troubles.

Yamanaka's recent work, Name Me Nobody (1999), is aimed at a younger audience than her previous works. The protagonist is thirteen-year-old Emi-Lou, who is overweight and whose only friends are her grandmother and her friend, Von. Emi-Lou struggles to overcome the nickname "Lumpy," given at school. She also tries to maintain her friendship with Von as the two grow older and it appears Von might be gay.

Yamanaka asserts that her work represents a more realistic picture of Hawaii than the "exotification" the islands receive in the mainstream media. Yamanaka's writing serves as an effective and just condemnation of the poverty and despair of Hawaii's immigrant minorities. She sees her books as helping to reclaim Hawaii's identity from the haole culture that has dominated the islands for the last several centuries. She also views her writing as a bridge linking pidgin-speaking students with literature to which they can relate. Yamanaka is a fierce defender of pidgin and a critic of what she sees as government attempts to eradicate the language. "Linguistic identity and cultural identity are skin and flesh. When you sever one from the other, you make it not okay to be who you are" (quoted in the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service). Yamanaka's unique voice makes it very clear she knows exactly who she is and that she is proud of it.