And I Bought Books, Too

You didn't think I'd actually leave Maui without some books, did you? I know, I know—anything I bought is readily available online, and I am a putz (how great is that word?) for using up valuable suitcase space with items that could easily have landed on my front steps in a nice brown box with no exertion on my part. But there's something pleasing about buying Bamboo Ridge Press books when you're in Hawaii. A beignet, after all, is best enjoyed in New Orleans. I totally made that up. I've never eaten a beignet or been to New Orleans.

But anyway.

I picked up Intersecting Circles: The Voices of Hapa Women in Poetry & Prose, edited by Marie Hara and Nora Okja Keller. I've only flipped through it, but I'm looking forward to reading Hara's introduction if for no other reason than its title: "Negotiating the Hyphen." Also, lotsa Pinays represented here. I also grabbed Best of Honolulu Fiction and a novel called The Queen of Tears. One of the blurbists (made that up, too) says that the latter "renew[s] the genre of Hawaii noir," and since I had no idea that such a genre even existed (and since I am easily seduced by blurbists), I thought oh, why not?.

And, finally, I stopped in a used bookstore hoping to find some old issues of Manoa because once upon a time in that fine journal, a man named Harold Augenbraum reviewed Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America. He mentioned my piece, but the whole review can only be accessed at libraries that subscribe to Project Muse. So all I've ever been able to read is, "In Veronica Montes’s 'Of Midgets and Beautiful Cousins,' a Filipino American ..." And that's it. That's it! Oh, how that ellipsis (or is it 'those ellipses?') haunt me! Did Harold like it? Did he hate it? Alas, I still do not know.

And that is all. It's good to be home. So many blogs to catch up with...