Honolulu

by Alan Brennert Narrated by Ali Ahn

Overview

Best-selling author Alan Brennert blends history and fiction to showcase Hawaii's dynamic past in this captivating novel. Set in the 1920s and 1930s, Honolulu explores the stark contrast between the image of the glamorous Hawaiian paradise portrayed to the mainland and the harsh reality of life on the island. With characters as vivid and richly descriptive as the history of Hawaii itself, this novel is sure to enthrall listeners.

Editorial Reviews

As a young Korean woman at the onset of 20th century, Regret knows that there is only one possible avenue to the education she seeks. She must become a mail-order bride. She travels to Hawaii to meet the man she has agreed to marry, but it becomes apparent all too quickly that he is not the genteel, prosperous young man she imagined he would be. Instead, she finds herself yoked to an impoverished plantation worker addicted to alcohol and gambling. Her painful situation forces her to fend for herself and form beneficial alliances with other "picture brides." This powerful historical novel draws you into the plight of a woman swimming in the uncertainty of a new culture.

Krista Walton

Honolulu is meticulously researched…[Brennert] intersperses cultural details—song lyrics, movies, popular books from the era—that add textured authenticity, and he incorporates major historic events…In many respects, Jin's story is prototypical, the bildungsroman of an aspiring woman, yearning for a life beyond the one society has prescribed. (Jin Eyre, anyone?) But in mooring this familiar character to the unique history of early-20th-century Hawaii, Brennert portrays the Aloha State's history as complicated and dynamic—not simply a melting pot, but a Hawaiian-style "mixed plate" in which, as Jin sagely notes, "many different tastes share the plate, but none of them loses its individual flavor, and together they make up a uniquely 'local' cuisine."
—The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Brennert's mostly successful follow-up to his book club phenomenon, Moloka'i, chronicles the lives of Asian immigrants in and around Hawaii's early 20th-century glamour days. As the tale begins, readers meet young Regret, whose name speaks volumes of her value in turn-of-the-20th-century Korea. Emboldened by her desire to be educated, Regret commits herself as a mail-order bride to a prosperous man in Hawaii, where girls are allowed to attend school. But when she arrives, she finds her new husband is a callous plantation worker with drinking and gambling problems. Soon, Regret (now known as Jin) and her fellow picture brides must discover their own ways to prosper in America and find that camaraderie and faith in themselves goes a long way. Brennert takes perhaps too much care in creating an encyclopedic portrait of Hawaii in the early 1900s, festooning the central narrative with trivia and cultural minutiae by the boatload. Luckily, Jin's story should be strong enough to pull readers through the clutter. (Mar.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Library Journal

This sweeping, epic novel follows Jin from her homeland of Korea to a new life on the blossoming Hawaiian Islands. The year is 1914, and Jin is a "picture bride," a sort of mail-order bride to a Korean man living in Hawaii whom she has never met. Not the wealthy husband she was promised, he is a poor laborer who treats her cruelly. Escaping her abusive husband, Jin must make her way in Honolulu, eventually finding love and stability. But as the growth of Hawaii results in racial tension and violence, Jin and her family struggle to adjust. Seeing life through Jin's eyes is a pleasure as she changes from a farm-bound, repressed immigrant girl to an outgoing, educated member of Hawaiian society. Brennert (Moloka'i) weaves the true stories of early Hawaii into his fictional tale, and many of the captivating people Jin encounters are real. His depiction of the effects of the Depression is startling. Let's hope Brennert follows up this second novel with a third and continues to capture this intriguing and little-explored segment of American history in beautifully told stories. Recommended for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ11/15/08.]
—Beth Gibbs

From the Publisher

A sweeping, meticulously researched saga that sees it plucky heroine, a mistreated but independent-minded Korean mail-order bride, through the highs and lows of life in twentieth-century Hawai'i, this book extends our readers' tradition of favoring lush, flavorful historical novels.” —Elle

“A well-researched and deftly written tale….For sheer readability, it's a hit…. Brennert has a good eye for places we can't see anymore: plantation life before the unions gained power; Chinatown when it was all tenements; Waikiki before the high-rises started going up. And it's clear he has real affection for the little people and places he so vividly brings to life. He's not just using historic Honolulu as a place to set a novel; he's bringing it to life for people who haven't had the chance to imagine it before.” —Honolulu Star-Bulletin

“To its core, Honolulu is meticulously researched….Brennert portrays the Aloha State's history as complicated and dynamic—not simply a melting pot, but a Hawaiian-style ‘mixed plate’ in which, as Jin sagely notes, ‘many different tastes share the plate, but none of them loses its individual flavor, and together they make up a uniquely “local” cuisine.” —The Washington Post

“Successful historical fiction doesn't just take a story and doll it up with period detail. It plunges readers into a different world and defines the historical and cultural pressures the characters face in that particular time and place. That's what Los Angeles writer Alan Brennert did in his previous novel, Moloka'i, the story of diseased Hawaiians exiled in their own land. He has done it again in "Honolulu," which focuses on the Asian immigrant experience in Hawaii, specifically that of Korean picture brides….This is a moving, multilayered epic by a master of historical fiction, in which one immigrant's journey helps us understand our nation's "becoming.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“[A] sweeping, epic novel….Brennert weaves the true stories of early Hawaii into his fictional tale, and many of the captivating people Jin encounters are real. His depiction of the effects of the Depression is startling. Let's hope Brennert follows up this second novel with a third and continues to capture this intriguing and little-explored segment of American history in beautifully told stories.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“[A] poignant, colorful story.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Brennert's lush tale of ambition, sacrifice, and survival is immense in its dramatic scope yet intimate in its emotive detail.” —Booklist

“Intriguing….Honolulu offers endless insights into a culture many readers may never have encountered, and Brennert further enlivens his tale by dropping in historical figures, some fictional, such as Charlie Chan, and some real, such as Clarence Darrow. But it is Korea that's the real focus of this story, and readers get a sympathetic feel for the daily humiliations the native population suffered from the Japanese who conquered the country….[Brennert's] smooth narrative style makes the book a pleasure to read.” —Roanoke Times

“With skill, historic accuracy and sensitivity and a clear passion for the people and places in Hawaii, Brennert weaves a story that will move and inspire readers.” —The Oklahoman

“In this dazzling rich, historical story, a young ‘picture bride' travels to Hawaii in 1914 in search of a better life….This intriguing novel is a fascinating literary snapshot of Hawaii during the early years of the last century. The story is compelling, poignant and powerful.” —Tucson Citizen

JULY 2009 - AudioFile

Facing a bleak future in her native Korea, Regret (yes, that's what her parents named her) travels to early-twentieth-century Hawaii as a mail-order bride. Her husband turns out to be a lout; she leaves him and becomes Jin, a successful businesswoman in the capital city. For this first-person presentation, Ali Ahn's voice is appropriately youthful and vulnerable, if not-at-all Asian-sounding. She glides over the vowel-rich Hawaiian words with ease and makes a story full of history pleasant listening. She could have done more with characterization—there are a number of opportunities for multiethnic depictions—but she carries this story of a gritty woman and her adopted city to its satisfying end. J.B.G. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170474066
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	03/13/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

When I was a young child growing up in Korea, it was said that the image of the fading moon at daybreak, reflected in a pond or stream or even a well, resembled the speckled shell of a dragon's egg. A dragon embodied the yang, the masculine principle of life, and it was thought that if a couple expecting a child prayed to the dragon's egg, their offspring would be male. Of course, every family in those days desired a son over a daughter. Only men could carry on the family line; women were merely vessels by which to provide society with an uninterrupted supply of men. So every day for months before I was born, my parents would rise before dawn, carrying offerings of fresh-steamed rice cakes to the stone well behind our home, as the sky brightened and snuffed out the stars. And they would pray to the pale freckled face of the moon floating on the water's surface, pray that the child growing inside my mother's womb would be a boy.

In this they were to be disappointed. On the third day of the First Moon in the Year of the Rooster, their first and only daughter was born to them. In those waning days of the Yi Dynasty, newborn girls were not deemed important enough to be graced with formal names, but were instead given nicknames. Often these represented some personal characteristic: Cheerful, Pretty, Little One, Big One. Sometimes they presumed to be commandments: Chastity, or Virtue. A few — Golden Calf, Little Flower — verged on the poetic. But too many names reflected the parents' feelings about the birth of a daughter. I knew a girl named Anger, and another called Pity. More than a few were known as Sorrow or Sadness. And everyone had heard the story of the father who named his firstborn daughter "One is Okay," his next, "Perhaps After the Second," the third, "Three Laughs," and the last, "Four Shames."

As for me, my parents named me "Regrettable"— eventually shortened to simply Regret.

Koreans seldom address one another by their given names; we believe a person's name is a thing of intimacy and power, not to be used casually by anyone but a family member or close friend. When I was very young, Regret was merely a name to me, signifying nothing more than that. But as I grew older and learned it held another meaning, it became a stone weight in my heart. A call to supper became a reminder of my unfortunate presence at the dinner table. A stern rebuke by my father — "Regret, what are we to do with you?" — seemed to hint that my place in the family was impermanent. Too young to understand the real reasons, I wondered what was wrong with me to make me so unwanted. Was I too short? I wasn't as tall as my friend Sunny, but not nearly so short as her sister Lotus. Was I too plain? I spent hours squinting into the mirror, judging my every feature, and found them wanting. My eyes were set too close together, my nose was too small, or maybe it was too big; my lips were thin, my ears flat. It was clear to see, I was plain and unlovely — no wonder my parents regretted my birth.

In truth, my father was merely old-fashioned and conservative, a strict adherent to Confucian ideals, one of which was the inherent precedence of man over woman: "The wife must regard her husband as heavenly; what he does is a heavenly act and she can only follow him." I was a girl, I would eventually marry and become part of someone else's family; as such my existence was simply not of the same consequence as that of my three brothers, who would carry on the family line and provide for our parents when they became old.

But I knew none of this when I was young, and instead decided it was due to the shape of my nose or the color of my eyes; and for years to come I would fret over and find fault with the girl who looked back at me from the mirror.

I have traveled far from the land of my birth, and even farther from who I was then. More than forty years and four thousand miles separate us: the girl of sixteen who took that first unwitting step forward, and the woman in her sixtieth year who now, in sight of the vast Pacific, presumes to memorialize this journey in mere words. It is a journey measured not in time or distance, but in the breadth of one's soul and the struggle of becoming.

* * *

Westerners count their age by the number of years completed on their birthdays, but in Korea one's personal age is determined differently. A newborn child is said to be already in its first year of life, and thus is deemed to be one year old at birth. I was born in the Year of the Rooster — roughly corresponding to the Western year 1897 — and upon the next lunar New Year in 1898, I turned two; in 1899, I was three; and so forth. This sounds confusing, I know, so hereafter, when speaking of ages, I shall do so according to Western reckoning.

My early life was typically Korean, at least for Koreans of a certain rank. Our family was yangban — we belonged to the country gentry and lived in a fine house with a tiled roof in a little village called Pojogae, not far from the city of Taegu, in Ky[??]ongsang Province. Pojogae means "dimple," and the village — mostly houses of mud and stone, their roofs thatched with rice grass — rested in a dimple of land surrounded by rolling hills. In winter these hills were draped in snow, but when I was very small my eldest brother, Joyful Day, revealed to me that their white shawls were actually made of rice, the most delicious in all the land: "They're called the Rice Mountains," he explained solemnly, "and people come from all over the kingdom to gather grains to plant their own rice paddies. Why, wars have even been fought over that rice."

I used to beg him to take me there, but he would just smile and shake his head. "The best-tasting rice in the world shouldn't be eaten so early in a person's life," he would say, "but saved for later."

"What kind of rice grows in winter?" I asked once, upon reaching the worldly age of five.

His reply: "Winter rice, of course!"

This sounded eminently logical, and I continued to believe in the legend of the Rice Mountains for longer than I care to admit.

Mine were good brothers — two older, one younger — and for the first six years of my life we played together, up and down the twisting banks of Dragontail Stream, along the entire length and breadth of our little valley. Father would not have approved had he known, as girls were not supposed to have fun with their brothers. But this all came to an end in my seventh year, when Confucian tradition decreed that boys and girls were to be strictly separated, like wheat from chaff. As in most Korean homes, my father and brothers lived in the outermost of two L-shaped wings, each with its own rooms and courtyard, which nestled close together but stood worlds apart. Since only men were permitted to have dealings with the outside world, they occupied the Outer Room. And as the women's realm was that of sewing and cooking and raising children, we inhabited the Inner Room.

Now, the most contact I had with my brothers was at mealtimes, when Mother and I would carry in the dining tables, set them on the floor, and serve bowls of steaming rice and mandu dumplings to the men of the house, who always ate first. We hovered nearby, out of sight but never out of earshot, in case they needed more kimchi — a spicy side dish made from fermented cabbage, garlic, and red peppers — or a cup of ginseng tea. Only after they had eaten their fill were we women permitted to return to the kitchen and there consume what food remained. In the course of serving them, I might get a wink or a smile now and then from Joyful Day or my second brother, Glad Son ... but the days of games and companionship between us were over, and I missed them sorely. I missed my brothers' teasing. For the first time I began to feel acutely the lack of a sister.

There were only three females in our household: my mother, my grandmother, and me. Grandmother, never seen without her long bamboo pipe, was Father's mother, and a more rancorous old crone never lived. She treated my mother as a beast of burden, addressing her by a Korean term roughly translatable as "that thing" or "what-you-may-call-her," as in:

"You there, what-you-may-call-her, fetch me some more tobacco!"

"Yes, halmoni," Mother said, obeying without complaint.

In this Grandmother was merely following long-standing precedent. New brides moving into their husbands' ancestral home were expected to kowtow to the every whim of their mothers-in-law, who did not hesitate to take full advantage of the situation. They, after all, had once been daughters-in-law kowtowing to their mothers-in-law, and now felt entitled to receive in kind.

"What's that look you're giving me, girl?" Grandmother snapped, having glimpsed a shadow of disapproval on my face.

"Nothing, halmoni," I told her.

"You think you know everything, don't you? But you don't. Someday," she said smugly, "you will be me, and then you'll understand."

I gave her a cold look, thinking, I will never be you, Grandmother, and retreated into the kitchen to help Mother wash the breakfast dishes.

It was a breezy autumn morning, and through our rice-paper windows I could hear the chatter of fallen leaves scuttling across the ground outside. I was anxious to finish my chores and go out to play. My brothers were leaving for school, and though I had some mild curiosity about what they did there — my parents, like most Confucians, revered learning and stressed its importance to their sons — those chattering leaves spoke more eloquently to me than the vague benefits of an "education," which in any event was only for boys.

When the last dish was dry I hurried outside and joined Sunny, who lived next door; her family, too, was yangban, though they owned less farmland than mine and lived in a smaller house. We began a game of shuttlecock in the road, but as often as we succeeded in batting the feathered ball between us, the wind would step in like a third player, scoop the ball up in a gusty hand, and send it spiraling away from us. We found this less frustrating than amusing, and there was much laughing and giggling as we chased the ball down. I raised my paddle and found myself fielding a whirlwind of leaves that swept in between us, swatting not the ball but a windblown scrap of paper that flew up and into my path.

I tore it off my paddle and was about to toss it aside, when I noticed that this wasn't just a scrap of old newspaper, but what looked like a page out of a book. I say looked because at this time I had absolutely no acquaintance with the printed word. I could read neither Chinese characters nor hangul, the native Korean alphabet; words were an enigma to me, each letter a puzzle I could not hope to solve. All I could tell from the browned, brittle page was that it was obviously from a very old book — perhaps one that had fallen apart and been discarded by its owner, only to have its pages plucked from the garbage heap by a stray puff of wind.

I examined it more closely, noting the elegant black strokes stacked up in neat columns, and though I couldn't fathom their meaning, I was impressed by the graceful and delicate calligraphy.

"Isn't this pretty?" I said, showing the page to Sunny.

Some of the marks were little more than vertical or horizontal lines with crimped ends. Some resembled upside-down wishbones, while others were a combination of circles, squares, slashes, squiggles, and dots. All seemed beautiful and mysterious to me.

"It's hangul," Sunny said, "I think." More than that she couldn't say because she was not able to read, either. Another bellow of wind sent the shuttle ball airborne again and Sunny raced after it.

On a whim, I slipped the scrap of paper into the waistband of my skirt — traditional Korean clothes, or hanbok, have no pockets — and resumed our game.

Later, alone in my room, the page presented its mysteries to me anew. I had never had any real curiosity before about these things called words, but the frustration I now felt at my inability to decipher these marks drove me to an uncharacteristically bold move: After supper I sneaked out of the Inner Room and into the men's quarters, where I hesitantly approached Joyful Day as he studied, alone, from a schoolbook.

"Elder brother?" I said in a low tone.

He glanced up, surprised. "Little sister, you shouldn't be in here." But the admonishment was softened by a smile.

"I know," I said, "but may I ask a great favor of you?"

I showed him what I had found and asked if he knew the meaning of the writing on the page.

His eyes tracked across the markings, right to left, then he turned the page over and examined the other side as well. "It seems to be some kind of ... travel narrative," he said.

"What is that?"

"An account of someone's journey to a faraway place. It appears to have been written by a yangban woman, judging by some talk of her maidservants, while visiting a place called Kwanbuk."

I was thunderstruck by this. "Women can write words? Onto paper?"

He smiled at that. "Some do. Some even publish what they write, though for heaven's sake don't tell Father I said so."

"But what does it say?"

"Nothing very exciting, I'm afraid. It simply relates how the woman went to view a sunrise."

"Would you read it to me?"

Bemused by my interest, he asked, "If I do, will you then go back to the Inner Room?"

"Yes, yes," I agreed.

He began to read aloud: "'All was bathed in the serene light of the moon. The sea was whiter than the night before, and a gale chilled my bones ...'"

I listened, rapt and silent, as he conjured from the cold black type the image of a woman of many years past, shivering in the chill predawn light as she waited for the sun to rise. There was nothing as thrilling or dramatic about the narrative as in the folktales my mother and grandmother sometimes told me — but the woman's vivid descriptions of the lake, the sky, and the rising sun were nonetheless enthralling. The light from below the horizon appeared as "rolls of red silk spread on the sea," and then slowly there arose "a strange object the size of my palm, glowing like a charcoal on the last night of the month."

The words, her words, entranced me. For the first time I understood that these lines and slashes contained entire worlds within them. The rising sun was like a charcoal on the last night of the month. How could that be? I asked myself. How could something be two different things at once? How could these little chicken scratches contain so much?

Suddenly my brother stopped in mid-sentence, coming up short where the page itself came to an end. "That's all there is, alas. Now, before Father sees you and scolds us both ..."

I thanked him, took the page, and crept back to my room.

There I used a piece of charcoal to copy some of the markings onto a scrap of butcher's paper. But without my brother's mediation, they were once again an unfathomable collection of lines and squiggles. I knew they held meaning, I remembered the words Joyful Day had spoken, but like a bad magician I could not summon them on my own.

Now each morning I found myself studying my father as he read his morning paper, wondering what those columns of black type might be saying to him. I felt a pang of envy for the first time as my brothers set off for school, and in the evenings I sneaked in and stole glances as they read by candlelight from their school primers. But of course I knew better than to expect I could ever do the same. Girls, at least girls in rural villages like Pojogae, did not go to school; I might envy a bird the power of flight, but I knew perfectly well that I could not be a bird.

And yet — I kept that page. I kept it against the faint, perhaps impossible hope that someday I might learn how to coax the meaning from those enigmatic marks. Until then, it remained silent in my presence — a silence I would be forced to abide for another eight years.

* * *

By the time I turned fifteen, in the Year of the Rat — by the Western calendar, 1912 — Confucian tradition forbade me from leaving the house without an escort. I was no longer free to play in the street with Sunny, or to go into the foothills to pick wildflowers, and I chafed at having to spend my every waking hour in the Inner Room or Inner Court. On the rare occasions when I was permitted to leave, I was required to wear a long green veil that covered all of my increasingly womanly body but for a slit through which my eyes could peek. From this I drew the conclusion that the physical changes I was experiencing were unsightly to society, thus making me even more insecure about my appearance.

There were only two respites from the tedium of the Inner Room. The first came each afternoon before we began cooking supper, when Mother and I would retire to her room and sew together. This was my favorite hour of the day — what Mother and I called our "thimble time." I had learned how to thread a needle before I was barely out of diapers, or so it seemed. I was proud that after years of practice I was able to sew as many as ten stitches in a single inch — but Mother could stitch twelve! A gifted seamstress, she made all of the household's clothes: the men's waist-length white jackets and baggy white trousers, as well as the short yellow jackets and pleated red skirts I wore as an unmarried girl. But her talents shone most brightly in the wrapping cloths she loved to make.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Honolulu"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Alan Brennert.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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