In The Taste of Kona Coffee, two nisei brothers, Aki and Tosh, fight to free themselves from the prison of old-world traditions and poverty only to find themselves bound by the constraints of neocolonialism. In Manoa Valley, set some thirty years later, Tosh, now a successful building contractor in Honolulu, must reconcile his image of the future with that of his son, Spencer, who dreams of life in mainland America. The third play, The Life of the Land, is set in 1980. Spencer has achieved his goals but at the cost of alienating himself from his family and his culture.

Hawaii No Ka...

Edward Sakamoto is one of Hawai'i's most popular playwrights. His skillfully constructed depictions of local life and command of stylized narrative devices have earned him recognition and acclaim both in the Islands and elsewhere in the U.S. The three plays collected here present an expertly dramatized panorama of life in Hawai'i from 1959 to 1994.

A'ala Park explores a working-class milieu with honesty and humor in this gripping study of a young man stunted by a slum environment at the time of statehood. Stew Rice, juxtaposing the hopes of the late 1950s with the realities of the...

Edward Sakamoto is one of Hawai'i's most popular playwrights. His skillfully constructed depictions of local life and command of stylized narrative devices have earned him recognition and acclaim both in the Islands and elsewhere in the U.S. The three plays collected here present an expertly dramatized panorama of life in Hawai'i from 1959 to 1994.

A'ala Park explores a working-class milieu with honesty and humor in this gripping study of a young man stunted by a slum environment at the time of statehood. Stew Rice, juxtaposing the hopes of the late 1950s with the realities of the...