Mark Panek

Big Happiness tells three interconnected stories. Two stories the Hawaii board of tourism would prefer you remain ignorant of.
First there is the tragic story of Percy Kipapa, a Hawaiian who goes to Japan to be a sumo wrestler, endures all of the stress, isolation and loneliness of being in a country where he doesn't speak the language and the grueling sometimes sadistic training involved to be in the sumo world.
The book also details how when he comes home 7 years later after accomplishing some truly amazing things in the sumo world, but with a body that is deeply broken, the Hawaii he returns to is not the beautiful ideal he remembers it. There are no opportunities for a 400+ pound Hawaiian in his native state. In fact there are very few opportunities for any native Hawaiians, other than drugs, alcohol abuse and desperation. It details Percy's fall, his murder, and the trial.
The second story details how Ice (meth) has taken hold of the Hawaiian islands, how it happened, and what role government had involved in crating the epidemic abuse of ice, and what little they have done to try and fix the problem.
The third part of the story details the corruption, and pure greed of over land development, kicking native Hawaiians off of their family land, and how everything is for sale to the highest bidder.
The story of the Hawaiian islands is a story of horrible abuse by government, missionaries, big business, and foreign outsiders destroying a set of islands for their own enrichment.
I can not recommend this book enough. The author Mark Panek, doesn't just tell this story well, he becomes part of it, and because he such a great writer, the reader feels they too are intimately part of what is unfolding.… (more)