Author Myra Ikeda will be signing her new book “A Harvest of Plantation Pidgin: The Japanese Way” at various locations during the coming weeks, starting this weekend in Kona.
Author Myra Ikeda will be signing her new book “A Harvest of Plantation Pidgin: The Japanese Way” at various locations during the coming weeks, starting this weekend in Kona.
The book examines, from the perspective of language, the plantation experience of the issei and subsequent generations who came to Hawaii (tengoku) to work in the sugar fields. Hilo-born Ikeda, shows how the Japanese language spoken by the first workers became influenced by the need to communicate with other workers, and how pidgin, the common plantation language that had developed earlier among the Chinese, Portuguese, and Hawaiians to understand each other, quickly integrated Japanese words.
Ikeda, sharing her personal story and motivation in tackling this project, includes important descriptions of plantation life along with discussion of camp names, children’s games like Jan Ken Po, and Hanabata Days. She also shows that for workers living close together, socializing and sharing food at lunchtime, plantation camps came to have a great or even greater impact on identity than ethnic background and the important role that Hawaii Pidgin English played in the dynamics of local identity.
Ikeda will be signing her book at 9 a.m. Sunday at Kona Hongwanji Mission in Kealakekua. She will also offer book signings 6 p.m. May 6 at Basically Books in Hilo; 2-4 p.m. May 7 at Hawaii Japanese Center in Hilo; 9 a.m. May 8 at Puna Hongwanji Mission; 6:30 p.m. May 12 at North Hawaii Education and Research Center in Honokaa; and 10 a.m. to noon May 21 at Hawaii Plantation Museum in Papaikou.
Info: www.mutualpublishing.com.