WATANABE, Sylvia

Born circa 1950s or 1960s

Over the past 20 years, there has been a sort of renaissance of Hawaiian literature. Writers like Milton Murayama, Darrell Lum, Nora Okja Keller, Susanna Moore, and Lois Ann Yamanaka have written significant fiction with Hawaiian themes. Another writer to follow this theme in her work is Sylvia Watanabe. With the emergence of Watanabe and these other writers, Hawaii seems to be carving out its own place in contemporary American literature. Hawaii has for more than 100 years been seen as the land of the hula and smiling faces with greetings of "Aloha." It is viewed as a land of tourist fare through TV shows and exotic travel brochures. However, the latest dawning of Hawaiian literature has redefined the state and locale, showing a more realistic view of life from the insider's point of view.

Watanabe, a Japanese American born and raised on Maui, has taken her place among today's literary voices with her first collection of stories, Talking to the Dead (1991, 1993, 1994). She evokes the everyday lives of Hawaiian villagers with a disarming blend of humor and pathos. Though for most Hawaii represents the dreamed-of vacation getaway, Watanabe adds some heart and soul, blended with some mysticism, to create a mood and picture that even the best vacation brochure could not provide.

Talking to the Dead is a collection of interrelated short stories revolving around a close-knit Asian community of Luhi in Hawaii. The stories depict Maui's Lahaina coast before it turned from fishing villages to tourist traps. The stories center on the community and family and often focus on interfamilial power struggles. Beneath the calm, normal exterior of the village, the reader will find some magic and dark family secrets.

The various stories are heartwarming and memorable. In "Anchorage," the story that opens the collection, Little Grandma takes her granddaughter (the narrator) to her attic to show the granddaughter her life's work—a magnificent quilt: "Though unfinished the quilt covered nearly the entire wall. From where I stood, perhaps 15 feet away, it seemed to contain every color in the entire world. As I moved closer, the colors began to cohere into squares, the squares into scenes—each scene depicting places and people in the life of the village." This story, like many others, celebrates Watanabe's relationship with her grandmother. This same celebration is relived in a collection edited by Mickey Pearlman, Between Friends: Writing Women Celebrate Friendship (1994). Watanabe's essay focuses on her mother and grandmother and on the heart-wrenching bedside vigil as her mother lies dying of pancreatic cancer.

"Anchorage" and the other stories also evoke a fantastic portrait of this rural Hawaiian village. It is a way of life that is rapidly disappearing, being replaced by resorts and tourist destinations. Watanabe writes in an afterword, "I wanted to tell how the Lahaina coast looked before it was covered with resorts…. I wanted to save my parents' and grandparents' stories."

The title story of Talking to the Dead, winner of the O. Henry Award, explores the life of an elderly mystic, Auntie Talking to the Dead, who conducts funeral rites. She is joined by a young, local Japanese girl, who cannot be married off and who becomes her apprentice. The apprentice learns the medicinal uses of indigenous plants and Hawaiian healing chants. She learns the value of the gift of life passed on by the elderly woman and is able to use her knowledge after the woman's death to keep the traditions of the old culture alive.

Talking to the Dead was nominated for a National Book award in 1992. This first collection has allowed Watanabe to open the doors of opportunity before her even further. She has made an impressive start; her writing infuses her stories and characters with a timeless, boundless quality. Though the stories are rooted in the period of World War II and its effect on Japanese Americans, they intermingle the different generations and make the settings easily adjustable to the past, present, and future.

Watanabe has also edited two collections of Asian American works, Home to Stay: Asian American Women's Fiction and Into the Fire: Asian American Prose (1996), and her work has been included in additional volumes like the 1998 Pushcart Prize XXII: Best of the Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson. In addition, Talking to the Dead was nominated in 1993 for the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction.

Other Works:

O-bon: A Gathering of Joy (1985).

Bibliography:

Bauermeister, E., 500 Great Books by Women. Cheuse, A. and Marshall, C., eds., Listening to Ourselves: More Stories From "The Sound of Writing" (1994). Frosch, M., Coming of Age in America: A Multicultural Anthology (1994). Pearlman, M., ed., A Place Called Home: Twenty Writing Women Remember (1997). Penelope, J. and Valentine, S., eds., International Feminist Fiction (1992).

Other references:

American Book Review (Nov. 1990). Asian Week (16 Oct. 1992). International Examiner (20 Apr. 1992). NYT (27 Sept. 1992). PW (6 July 1992). San Francisco Chronicle (6 Sept. 1992).

—DEVRA M. SLADICS