Heads By Harry

Rating:
Summary: A true coming of age book, Hawaiian-style!!
Review: I have enjoyed reading all of Lois Yamanaka's books. However, "Heads By Harry" is by far the most entertaining and most descriptive of life growing up local in the islands. Her characters have a natural rawness. They are frequently distasteful and crude, but Yamanaka portraits them in a style that you eventually love them all. It was hard to put this book down. I wanted the Pau hana hours to continue forever.

Rating:
Summary: I read her book - she read my mind
Review: I just completed reading Heads by Harry - quicker than most novels I've started and eventually put down. I could not put down this book. I am left wishing for closure on Billy and Toni and to see what happens with the rest of the gang.
I felt this book in my heart and throat. Mrs Yamanaka's writing always speak to me and takes the emotion I felt growing up in and out of Hawaii. The way you know the haoles do better and maybe one day you marry one to make a life for yourself - but better not be seen with one until then. How you play with the boys even though there is this taken-for-granted sexism that you don't really fight or care to. How you respect your elders no matter what. And how you must partake in the deep traditions of culture no matter how silly or out of place.
This book pulled all the emotions of growing up in Hawaii out of me, made me cry and laugh and remember why I left the islands but made me sad that I did in the same event. Wonderful book - just wish there was yet another one to this trilogy. I want Toni to finally give into the pressures of society and let the haole boy in...I've been there and know exactly how she's feeling and how she is so scared to make that leap. It's like Mrs. Yamanaka took some of my own teenage experiences and wrote all about it. I want to cry now that the book is over! This is a definite recommended book to anyone who wants to REALLY know what it means to grow up in Hawaii (but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has NO IDEA about Hawaii or doesn't have anyone from the islands to talk about it to...they can wind up taking it the wrong way like some comments) and for all those who grew up in Hawaii.

Rating:
Summary: Ms. Yamanaka, You're Breaking My Heart!
Review: What an amazing writer! Yet, I've now read three books by this wonderful author, and the redundancy of the themes is ruining my experience. Why do all the characters have to end with such downtrodden lives, where the girls get pregnant by the middle of the book, the sister is a wannabe diva, and the father and mother just plain don't care?

As for the stereotypes, I think that the stereotypes bring the book alive. You're not supposed to really question the motives of the characters, but instead see how they play out in terms of the main character's life.

Think about it -- if the stereotypical chauvanistic men were sensitive and thoughtful in the book, read Shakespeare, drank port wine instead of beer and snorted coke, remained monogamous, and spoke proper English, would the book be interesting? They're part of the tension that lies in Toni Yagyuu's life, and help shape the experience around her. If they were proper young men, would we really discover that Maverick and Wyatt actually had a sensitive side? Would we even be dealing with the issue of her not knowing who the father was? No, because they'd be acting perfectly from page one, and wouldn't both be sleeping with Toni at the same time. The lives of the characters simply cannot be perfect in order to have a book with a decent plot.

However, the lives of the characters shouldn't be played out over and over and over and over in each work Ms. Yamanaka writes. It's really beginning to disappoint me.