Murayama, Milton (A.) 1923-

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MURAYAMA, Milton (A.) 1923-

PERSONAL: Born April 10, 1923, in Lahaina, Hawaii; son of Isao and Sawa (maiden name, Yasukawa) Murayama; married Dawn Pyne, March 17, 1967. Ethnicity: "Japanese." Education: University of Hawaii, B.A., 1947; Columbia University, M.A., 1950. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Atheist.

ADDRESSES: Home—2371 Diamond St., San Francisco, CA 94131. Agent—c/o Author Mail, University of Hawaii Press, 2840 Kolowalu St., Honolulu, HI 96822.

CAREER: Worked various jobs before becoming an import specialist at U.S. Customs, San Francisco, CA, 1962-1983. Military service: Trained at Military Intelligence Language School in Camp Savage, Minnesota; served as interpreter and translator in India and Taiwan, 1944-1946.

AWARDS, HONORS: American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, 1980, for All I Asking for Is My Body; Hawaii Award for Literature, 1991, for All I Asking for Is My Body; Ka Palapala Po'okela Award for Excellence in Literature, 1995, for Five Years on a Rock, and 1999, for Plantation Boy.

WRITINGS:

All I Asking for Is My Body, Supa Press (San Francisco, CA), 1975, reprinted, University of Hawaii Press (Honolulu, HI), 1988.

All I Asking for Is My Body (play; based on Murayama's novel; produced by Asian American Theatre, San Francisco, CA, 1989), published in The Quietest Singing, Hawaii State Foundation of Culture and Arts, 2002.

Yoshitsune (historical play), produced in Honolulu, HI, 1982.

Five Years on a Rock, University of Hawaii Press, 1994.

Plantation Boy, University of Hawaii Press, 1998.

Also author of I'll Crack Your Head Kotsun. Contributor of stories to periodicals.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Oyama, the fourth novel of a tetralogy.

SIDELIGHTS: When Nation magazine asked a group of education professionals in 1992 to name "a book on education, written in the twentieth century, that you would propose as a tool in the struggle to uphold the idea of democratic schooling today," University of Hawaii professor of ethnic studies Franklin S. Odo chose Milton Murayama's novel All I Asking for Is My Body. Autobiographical in nature, Murayama's book utilizes pidgin English and the syntax used by Hawaiians during the early twentieth century to explore the islands' now-disappearing culture. As the author noted of his motivation for writing in an essay published in Writers of Hawaii: A Focus on Our Literary Heritage, "I want to put into record a body of first-and secondhand experiences" surrounding life on the island of Maui, where he was raised. For Murayama, the process of writing "is an act of exploring and discovering, examining new territory, becomign familiar with it, then pushing on. My aim is to illuminate and make aware, even uncomfortable. Illumination means breaking through my own ignorance, and good writing means capturing and sharing that surprise and joy of discovery."

All I Asking for Is My Body describes the experiences of Japanese who lived and worked on Hawaiian sugar plantations in the period before World War II. Odo hailed the book's sensitive treatment of a group who are a minority in Hawaii and subject to some hostility from other ethnic groups because they hold more than half the state's teaching and school administration jobs. "These Japanese-Americans must be understood in the context of the experiences Murayama describes," explained Odo in the Nation. "They must also read and understand Murayama in order to liberate themselves from the shackles that prevent them from moving into a new era." Indeed, the coming-of-age novel, in which the dirt-poor, pidgin-speaking protagonist longs to free himself from his parents' debts so he can make an independent life, was named a best book by the Before Columbus Foundation, an organization that seeks to broaden the scope of American literature to include works that reflect the country's multicultural and multi-ethnic diversity, and that has since 1980 sponsored the American Book Awards.

At the time of its publication, All I Asking for Is My Body received only modest critical attention. A Choice reviewer admired the book's sympathetic treatment of both older and younger generations of Japanese-Americans, and praised the author's expert use of pidgin, which, in the reviewer's opinion, added linguistic authenticity to the novel. But the reviewer commented that the book's small publisher would probably be unable to obtain it wider recognition. After winning an American Book Award in 1980, however, the novel was reissued by the University of Hawaii Press, which also published two subsequent books that would, with All I Asking for Is My Body and the planned work Oyama, form a planned tetralogy. Murayama also adapted his first novel as a play.

Murayama's second novel, Five Years on a Rock, is also set in the early twentieth century, and tells the story of Sawa, a Japanese "picture bride" who is married off to a stranger in Hawaii. Booklist contributor Denise Perry Donavin praised the book highly for its exuberant descriptions of both Sawa's initial excitement and her disappointments on arriving in Hawaii. In Kliatt, Chris E. Crowe observed that there was much to admire in the novel, but added that the book's reliance on Hawaiian and Japanese phrases might pose an obstacle to some young readers. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews considered the novel informative and intriguing, but "dispassionate." The reviewer further noted that Murayama's use of Japanese and Hawaiian puns is sometimes clumsy.

Plantation Boy, Murayama's third novel, begins shortly before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. It tells the story of Toshio/Steven, a second-generation Japanese American, or Nisei, who struggles to overcome discrimination and prejudice to realize his dream of becoming an architect.

Toshio, who is rejected by the military because of a broken ear drum, watches as his friends leave to defend their country even as their parents are interned in concentration camps. After the war Toshio works hard to support his family and educate himself at night school. The book ends—abruptly, in the opinion of Library Journal reviewer Janis Williams—when Toshio succeeds in becoming a certified architect. "There should have been more," wrote Williams, "but this is recommended as a thoughtful reading."

In the Atlantic Monthly, Jamie James cited Murayama as one of a group of important Hawaiian writers who have contributed to a revitalization of Hawaiian literature since the 1970s. "For at least the past twenty years," James wrote, "something like a renaissance of Hawaiian literature has been going on: Milton Murayama, Darell Lum, Sylvia Watanabe, and Nora Okja Keller … have produced significant fiction about Hawaiian themes, written in authentic Hawaiian vernacular." James emphasized that such writing is of particular importance because it serves as a corrective to romantic conceptions of life on the islands, and treats issues of ethnicity with honesty and sensitivity.