The Book: Honolulu, by Alan Brennert

The Story: This is the life story of a girl who was named “Regret” when she was born.  Her family lived in Korea and raised her very traditionally.  Thanks to a spunky aunt and her friend, Regret learns to read and realizes bigger dreams for herself.  She becomes a “picture bride” and gets on a boat headed for Hawaii.  She wants to live more freely and get a real education.  On the boat on the way over, she meets four or five other women who are on the same journey and becomes close friends with them.

When they reach Hawaii, their husbands are mostly older men and none of them are as rich as they said they were.  Regret ends up a plantation wife to a drinking, gambling husband.  After some awful beatings and a horrible year, Regret gets some money she saved up and heads for Honolulu to live independently.  She re-names herself Jin, which means gem in Korean.  She makes new friends and gets established.  She eventually meets back up with all of the girls that she was on the boat with and their story lines start to come out of the woodwork.

The novel really gets into the history of Hawaii and how a huge influx of immigrants from all over the world effected the islands.  There are a lot of issues explored: women’s rights, economic issues, racism, the role of family, and immigration.

What I thought: I decided to read this book because I read Moloaki earlier in the year, and it is has been one of my favorite of ‘09.  Alan Brennert didn’t disappoint.  This was good stuff.

I really like books that follow the whole lifetime of a person and we got to see this girl from the time she was 8 until she was 60.  It was just beautiful to see those ups and downs that come with growing up and how they changed her as a person.  It was awesome to watch her grow from this timid girl in a veil to a successful women with a lot going for her.

I am always impressed when someone can write from the point of view of a person of the opposite gender, but this guy did it twice quite successfully.  He must have grown up with a lot of sisters or has a wife who helps him with the details.

I often have a hard times with books about Asia, especially historical fiction, just because I know so little about this culture.  I think that the things that needed to be explained were, and after the first few pages I didn’t feel uncomfortable with this at all.

The only thing that bugged me (and this bugged me in Moloaki too) was the heavy use of Hawaiian words.  He would define it for you once, and then it became a common word in the book.  I frequently found  myself having to flip back and see what this or that meant.

Conclusion: In my opinion, this one was not as good as Moloaki, but it was darn close.