hularider's Full Review: Lois-Ann Yamanaka - Heads by Harry
You were there.
If you want to know what it was like to grow up local in Hilo, Hawai'i, read Heads by Harry - or just about any of Lois-Ann's other edgy works.
I first met her at a Bamboo Ridge Press poetry reading. "What a brave and brutally honest young woman!" I thought. Later, when I began reading her books, I thought that again.
Heads is the first of Lois-Ann's full-length works that I have read, and since picking it up, I try to acquire any of her new works as soon as they come out. Lois-Ann is the first Hawai'i author I read who depicted the Hawai'i I grew up in. The only reason I have not reviewed her earlier is that I had no idea she was listed here.
I bought Heads by Harry some years ago, but the book never stales on me. It remains as fresh as Hilo's famous rain. And like Hilo's rain, it lashes, drenches, and pounds. It is vigorous, vibrant, and brutally cleansing. It's not for everyone.
Heads describes the coming of age of a local-Japanese girl of a typically-atypical Hilo family. Toni, the protagonist, is us. Or, if not us, someone we know very well. I grew up with Toni, her brother and sister, and the other residents of Mamo Street. There really was a taxidermy shop. I saw Cat Ballou at the Mamo Theater. I graduated from Hilo High School. The shop and the Mamo Theater are now gone, but HHS is still there. And so are Paula and Francetta. And they still lean on the wall in the evenings, between the tavern and where the taxidermy shop used to be.
Lois-Ann took the bones of Hilo's Mamo Street, let the maggots eat them clean, and then re-fleshed them with characters who are so true to us that I feel as though I could look through my HHS yearbook and find their names.
Lois-Ann is a bit younger than myself, but the Hilo in which Toni lives is the same one I grew up in. I grew up, and still live, just 9 blocks from Toni's home.
If you want a sweetly seductive book about dusky maidens won by brawn-armed sailors, you'll need to look elsewhere.
I hesitate to say too much, as I feel like any description would impact a reader's direct experience of the book. Like a Hilo friendship, you need to discover it for yourself, and let the relationship grow. You will like each other, or not.
So, I will close by answering the basic questions in the writing guide:
Why did I buy the book? To support a fellow local author, and because I recognized the author's name from that long-ago poetry reading.
What do I love about the book? It's honesty. It's utter, unshakable honesty.
What do I hate about the book? That I have to put it down.
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