Kawai Strong Washburn
Author of Sharks in the Time of Saviors
Works by Kawai Strong Washburn
Our Life as the Volcano Cult 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 20th century
- Gender
- male
- Occupations
- writer
software engineer - Agent
- Duvall Osteen (Aragi)
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Honoka'a, Hawaii, USA
- Places of residence
- Hāmākua coast, Big Island, Hawaii, USA
Washington, D. C. USA
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
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Reviews
I liked this book...and a few days after reading it, I liked it more because it is the kind of book that gives me lots to think about. To me, the story is about the impact of colonialism. When local industry/agriculture collapses and Hawaii becomes reliant on tourism, their culture suffers. The people lose their connection to the land, and their customs and rituals become entertainment for tourists. As the author writes: When our language was outlawed, so our gods went, so prayers went, so show more ideas went, so the Island went. (pg. 181).
The other theme of the book was that of sibling dynamics where one child is special (whether gifted or handicapped), and favoured, and just takes up more space in the family, leaving the siblings struggling to find their place. This dynamic was excellently portrayed in the book.
Strong, strong writing and fascinating characters. And, at the end, some characters have found their way back; they are healed by their return to the land and to their culture. One will get there, I think. And one remains lost.
p.s. I don't like magical realism or mysticism as a rule, but it is well handled and work in this book. show less
The other theme of the book was that of sibling dynamics where one child is special (whether gifted or handicapped), and favoured, and just takes up more space in the family, leaving the siblings struggling to find their place. This dynamic was excellently portrayed in the book.
Strong, strong writing and fascinating characters. And, at the end, some characters have found their way back; they are healed by their return to the land and to their culture. One will get there, I think. And one remains lost.
p.s. I don't like magical realism or mysticism as a rule, but it is well handled and work in this book. show less
As I read the first few chapters, I honestly didn’t know if I was going to stick with this book. The style of writing took a bit to get used to, but somewhere in Nainoa’s first chapter, I was completely hooked.
This book is very well written: lyrical and lush prose, every chapter told from the POV of one of the members of Nainoa’s family. Each character is so well developed, it gets to the point you don’t need the chapter titles to tell you which character is speaking—they are each show more so distinct and original.
Nainoa, with his eventful conception, his childhood rescue from drowning BY sharks, and his magical abilities, is the center of the story, but at the same time, it’s not really about just him. We spend a lot of time in the heads of his mother Malia, brother Dean, and sister Kauwi.
This is the story of a poor Hawaiian family. It’s the story of imperfect parents trying to do their best for their children, and those children trying to navigate their own way in life. It’s Nainoa trying to understand the purpose of his gift, and his siblings trying to understand where they fit in relation to their special brother. It’s a story rich in descriptions of Hawai’i and legends of the gods of the island. The magical realism is perfectly done, and the touches of magic actually serve to make the rest of the story seem all the more real. Sharks in the Time of Saviors isn’t a happy, feel-good story, but it still left me hopeful and made me smile more than once.
Kawai Strong Washburn has written a very powerful debut. I’m endlessly impressed with his storytelling, especially how he was able to write such a believable female character in Malia. I sometimes struggle with the way male authors write a woman’s POV, but not here.
It seems wrong to say that I ‘enjoyed’ such an extremely depressing book, but here we are: I loved this book. show less
This book is very well written: lyrical and lush prose, every chapter told from the POV of one of the members of Nainoa’s family. Each character is so well developed, it gets to the point you don’t need the chapter titles to tell you which character is speaking—they are each show more so distinct and original.
Nainoa, with his eventful conception, his childhood rescue from drowning BY sharks, and his magical abilities, is the center of the story, but at the same time, it’s not really about just him. We spend a lot of time in the heads of his mother Malia, brother Dean, and sister Kauwi.
This is the story of a poor Hawaiian family. It’s the story of imperfect parents trying to do their best for their children, and those children trying to navigate their own way in life. It’s Nainoa trying to understand the purpose of his gift, and his siblings trying to understand where they fit in relation to their special brother. It’s a story rich in descriptions of Hawai’i and legends of the gods of the island. The magical realism is perfectly done, and the touches of magic actually serve to make the rest of the story seem all the more real. Sharks in the Time of Saviors isn’t a happy, feel-good story, but it still left me hopeful and made me smile more than once.
Kawai Strong Washburn has written a very powerful debut. I’m endlessly impressed with his storytelling, especially how he was able to write such a believable female character in Malia. I sometimes struggle with the way male authors write a woman’s POV, but not here.
It seems wrong to say that I ‘enjoyed’ such an extremely depressing book, but here we are: I loved this book. show less
The Publisher Says: In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends.
Nainoa's family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods--a show more belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart: Nainoa, working now as a paramedic on the streets of Portland, struggles to fathom the full measure of his expanding abilities; further north in Washington, his older brother Dean hurtles into the world of elite college athletics, obsessed with wealth and fame; while in California, risk-obsessed younger sister Kaui navigates an unforgiving academic workload in an attempt to forge her independence from the family's legacy.
When supernatural events revisit the Flores family in Hawai'i—with tragic consequences—they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage, and the cost of survival.
THE PUBLISHER SENT ME AN ADVANCE REVIEW COPY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I stared at the cover of this ARC for long, long minutes when I opened its garishly orange bubble-mailer. It is *lush* and deeply, for the shark-o-phobic like me, disturbing; its colors unsubtle reminders of the intensity of tropical existence, its acrobatic predator giving me the heebie-jeebies while reminding me that its life-force greatly exceeds mine, its lust for eating casts my puny efforts at survival into the shade; and its typographical choice, the handlettered look of the information about what I was holding, capped off my impression that this was vital and urgent storytelling.
My jam, in short.
Families suck. The one you were born into probably isn't the one you'd be happiest growing up in. This is an immutable law of existence and a giant gift to storytellers everywhere. But the fact is it's what you got, and you got to work with it for the rest of your life. That's hell and that's a gift. What it leaves most of us with is an aching, unfillable void of loneliness. But what your family would be, could be, is a nest of itchy twigs that poke you to go find and build and be something entirely other to its system:
The voices of these characters whose family, that awful itchy nest, is wrapped in a golden mist of mythological reality, are shouting their horror and pain at the void inside them, the one that Being Different opens in all of us...and who could possibly be more different than a boy saved by a shark? Author Washburn will gladly fill you in on who: The whole damned crew, that's who, every single life suddenly changed without any notion of consent. Gods don't ask, they give-take. There's never a single uncomplicated act in a god's repertoire, that is not how the Universe works. Author Washburn knows this. He has plumbed some depths in order to bring this story to us.
He knows his god-onions, don't you agree? I get the distinct impression that he's been on the end of a god's pole before. He knows too much for it to be otherwise, imagination can not create this level of Knowing. (And anyone who wants to argue that imagination is all there is is firmly directed back to philosophy class. I got no patience to have that discussion on the forty-seventh anniversary of the first time I had it, thanks awfully.)
It's funny to say it, but this book's exuberant life-force is, at its heart, about silence.
The cacophony that is silence, the absence of color that is white, the depth of addiction and the height of passion: All facets of the same unfillable void. We do contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman famously said of himself. And still there is room for more: More life, more joy, more more more...and there can never be enough, because the essence of wanting is needing and without wanting there is no point whatever to any of this.
La commedia è finita. show less
Nainoa's family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods--a show more belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart: Nainoa, working now as a paramedic on the streets of Portland, struggles to fathom the full measure of his expanding abilities; further north in Washington, his older brother Dean hurtles into the world of elite college athletics, obsessed with wealth and fame; while in California, risk-obsessed younger sister Kaui navigates an unforgiving academic workload in an attempt to forge her independence from the family's legacy.
When supernatural events revisit the Flores family in Hawai'i—with tragic consequences—they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage, and the cost of survival.
THE PUBLISHER SENT ME AN ADVANCE REVIEW COPY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I stared at the cover of this ARC for long, long minutes when I opened its garishly orange bubble-mailer. It is *lush* and deeply, for the shark-o-phobic like me, disturbing; its colors unsubtle reminders of the intensity of tropical existence, its acrobatic predator giving me the heebie-jeebies while reminding me that its life-force greatly exceeds mine, its lust for eating casts my puny efforts at survival into the shade; and its typographical choice, the handlettered look of the information about what I was holding, capped off my impression that this was vital and urgent storytelling.
My jam, in short.
Families suck. The one you were born into probably isn't the one you'd be happiest growing up in. This is an immutable law of existence and a giant gift to storytellers everywhere. But the fact is it's what you got, and you got to work with it for the rest of your life. That's hell and that's a gift. What it leaves most of us with is an aching, unfillable void of loneliness. But what your family would be, could be, is a nest of itchy twigs that poke you to go find and build and be something entirely other to its system:
Years already I'd been trying to understand what was inside me, while the rest of the world was trying it to tear it out.
–and–
There was this one philosophy class I been in at the university, where the professor was talking about force. He said people think force and power is the same thing, but really force is what you use when you don't got power.
–and–
Whenever I've made a choice in my life, a real choice... I can always feel the change, after I choose. The better versions of myself, moving just out of reach.
The voices of these characters whose family, that awful itchy nest, is wrapped in a golden mist of mythological reality, are shouting their horror and pain at the void inside them, the one that Being Different opens in all of us...and who could possibly be more different than a boy saved by a shark? Author Washburn will gladly fill you in on who: The whole damned crew, that's who, every single life suddenly changed without any notion of consent. Gods don't ask, they give-take. There's never a single uncomplicated act in a god's repertoire, that is not how the Universe works. Author Washburn knows this. He has plumbed some depths in order to bring this story to us.
If a god is a thing that has absolute power over us, then in this world there are many. There are gods that we choose and gods that we can't avoid; there are gods that we pray to and gods that prey on us; there are dreams that become gods and nightmares that do, as well.
–and–
I wanted us together, wanted them to feel with me the big nameless thing we'd worked our way into, a silence like the presence of our own private God.
He knows his god-onions, don't you agree? I get the distinct impression that he's been on the end of a god's pole before. He knows too much for it to be otherwise, imagination can not create this level of Knowing. (And anyone who wants to argue that imagination is all there is is firmly directed back to philosophy class. I got no patience to have that discussion on the forty-seventh anniversary of the first time I had it, thanks awfully.)
It's funny to say it, but this book's exuberant life-force is, at its heart, about silence.
I go itchy with want, thin on sleep. I feel her fingers in mine. The way we could be both hard and soft on each other. Her sandy voice calling out as I climb one exposed cliff after another. ... All night this all goes through me, the four hours of sleep I get.
–and–
The more I understood what we were all made of, the more everyone I'd touched stayed inside me, still crying out, showing me their injuries over and over and over and over and over.
The cacophony that is silence, the absence of color that is white, the depth of addiction and the height of passion: All facets of the same unfillable void. We do contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman famously said of himself. And still there is room for more: More life, more joy, more more more...and there can never be enough, because the essence of wanting is needing and without wanting there is no point whatever to any of this.
Take a match and hold it to the strip, start the strike. Somewhere at the microscopic level there are whole worlds of hot light that gather and jump to the match tip. That's what we were.
La commedia è finita. show less
This is one of those books that is mentioned in the "books to look for" kind of list that I note and then never get around to picking up because reading hours are limited, my book budget sadly under-funded and there are so many books being published. But this one is a part of The Morning News Tournament of Books Summer Reading, and if there's one thing I like even more than reading, it's getting to have opinions about books, so a copy was purchased (and if you haven't switched over to show more bookshop.org, now is a great time to do so).
When Nainoa is a child, he falls from a tourist boat. He is returned to the vessel by a group of sharks, unharmed. His parents are amazed and from that moment he is viewed differently, as someone special, a situation that amplifies when he discovers in himself the power to heal. His siblings resent being left in his shadow, and less than understanding when he explains the pressure he feels. But all three excel in different ways, each ending up on the mainland at university, Nainoa graduating early from Stanford, and working as a paramedic as he waits to begin medical school, Dean on a basketball scholarship in Spokane and Kaui, the youngest, studying engineering in San Diego. What might read as an American success story in lesser hands becomes something more thoughtful as each member of the family struggles in a world where they are alone and without a support system.
What a wonderful surprise this debut novel was! Yes, there's a bit of folklorish magic in there, but at heart this is the story of a family. One that struggles to get by in a place where jobs are scarce and low-paying, where the kids are fully aware of their circumstances. One in which one child is favored, putting enormous pressure on him and harming the bond between the siblings as the other two fight to be appreciated. And along with a pitch-perfect look at family dynamics, there's a gorgeous, complicated description of life in Hawai'i and how Hawaiians feel when they move to the mainland. The writing is very, very good and this does not feel like a debut novel at all. show less
When Nainoa is a child, he falls from a tourist boat. He is returned to the vessel by a group of sharks, unharmed. His parents are amazed and from that moment he is viewed differently, as someone special, a situation that amplifies when he discovers in himself the power to heal. His siblings resent being left in his shadow, and less than understanding when he explains the pressure he feels. But all three excel in different ways, each ending up on the mainland at university, Nainoa graduating early from Stanford, and working as a paramedic as he waits to begin medical school, Dean on a basketball scholarship in Spokane and Kaui, the youngest, studying engineering in San Diego. What might read as an American success story in lesser hands becomes something more thoughtful as each member of the family struggles in a world where they are alone and without a support system.
What a wonderful surprise this debut novel was! Yes, there's a bit of folklorish magic in there, but at heart this is the story of a family. One that struggles to get by in a place where jobs are scarce and low-paying, where the kids are fully aware of their circumstances. One in which one child is favored, putting enormous pressure on him and harming the bond between the siblings as the other two fight to be appreciated. And along with a pitch-perfect look at family dynamics, there's a gorgeous, complicated description of life in Hawai'i and how Hawaiians feel when they move to the mainland. The writing is very, very good and this does not feel like a debut novel at all. show less
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