Right:
The cover for
"แล้ว and then entwine" (2011) by Jai Arun Ravine was designed by
Sumet (Ben) Viwatmanitsakul.
"Ravine weaves Thai and English, the past and the present, the lyric and the narrative, into a hypnotizing poetic dance."
4
Above:
The cover for "Living Pidgin: Contemplations on Pidgin Culture," (2002) by Lee A. Tonouchi was designed by Mike Cueva.
"A collection of da pidgin guerrilla’s talks and poems, over 60 pages, some concrete, on language and culture in Hawaiʻi.
Islands and Caribbean writing, although in the Caribbean the indigenous peoples were destroyed. But there are affinities between, say, the creole writings in Jamaica, which came from plantations and the creole writings in Hawaiʻi. There are affinities with Irish writing and the resistance against the British, Welsh writing and the resistance against the British.
But I think that this region has its own dynamic, and I am interested in crossing a lot of the categories and boundaries that are often put up, like between Pacific writing and Asian writing in translation, or between white Australian writing and Pacific Islander writing. Crossing those boundaries is really what Tinfish is most about.
WC: What else makes Pacific writing unique?
SS: Well, like I say, I think the definition is completely up for grabs. I think there’s a big move, in this department, toward indigenous Pacific writing, which is an important thing to cultivate and to teach. But I’m interested more in how that new literature can be put into conversation with “older literatures”— either local Asian, or Asian-American, or Caucasian-American writings here and, say, on the West Coast.
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