Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai'i Paperback - 1996

Media reviews

My favorite kind of book is a poet's first prose work. The poet comes upon a story so large -- his life, nature, history -- hat he must break out of careful verse into the freedom of prose. William Carlos Williams, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sylvia Plath, Raymond Carver, Louise Erdrich -- and now Garrett Hongo."

-- Maxine Hong Kingston

"When I finished this brave and sharp story I wanted to start again because of the honesty in the author's voice and the many gifts -- beautiful language, vivid and apt anecdotes, a novelist's narrative instinct -- that await the reader. Garrett Hongo elucidates here a Dragon; he reveals intelligence as love. And he magics time."

-- Barry Lopez

"In this memoir, the village of Volcano is both a place on the map and a beacon in the far more elusive terrain of a man's personal history. In charting that history, Garrett Hongo has produced a lyrical and penetrating work grafting intimate recollection with broad insight. He has aspired to Rousseau's standard for himself -- and for all memoirists -- to recount comprehensively 'what I have felt . . . and what my feelings have had me do.'"

Citations

• Publishers Weekly, 04/29/1996, Page 0