Lois-Ann Yamanaka

The next year, Yamanaka completed her third book, Blu’s Hanging 'which created even more of an uproar among Asian American critics. As the novel treated characters of both Filipino and Japanese American backgrounds within the Hawaiian landscape, she was given the Asian American Studies National Book Award in 1998, however, it was annulled almost immediately for its use of stereotypical language. Other known Asian American authors such as Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston emerged in support of Yamanaka during the controversy. The work was deemed, "a well-wrought but painful work" by Anna Quan Leon in the Library Journal. In defending herself, Yamanaka spoke out, telling Newsweek reporter Donna Foote that 'the distinction between the narrator and the author is not being made'".

An excerpt from Yamanaka's next work has been released. According to the April 2007 issue of Honolulu Magazine Yamanaka's upcoming novel has been given the working title of The Mother Mary Stories[1].

In 2006, Yamanaka explored a spiritual approach in the novel, Behold the Many, set on the island of Oahu. In the book, a young woman is haunted by ghosts which ends in what a Kirkus Reviews contributor called a "beautifully tragic" outcome. Carol Haggas of Booklist wrote the book was a "richly atmospheric novel which paints a chillingly spectral portrait of souls tormented by love and guilt."

In 2004, Silent Years, a short film based on Yamanaka's screenplay was released. The story of a thirteen-year-old girl who finds herself caught between her abusive uncle and older boyfriend, it is based on two poems from her collection Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre and has been described as "brutal." The film was locally produced and directed by Honolulu native and University of Southern California film school graduate James Sereno.

In 1996, Yamanaka’s second book, Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers, again told in Pidgin, was a coming-of-age story made up of "a series of connected vignettes" that "examin[ed] larger issues of class and ethnicity". Lauren Belfer, of the New York Times Book Review, claimed the book to be "somewhat impenetrable" ... leaving "haunting images" in the minds of readers.

She completed her first book, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater, in 1993, which, was coined "'witty' and 'street-smart'" by Kiana Davenport in Women's Review of Books. The novel, "composed of four verse novellas narrated by working-class Hawaiian teenagers...explore[d] such subjects as ethnic identity, sexual awakening, drug use, and abusive relationships." Lawrence Chua, of the Voice Literary Supplement, wrote, "Her poetry is enabled by its elegant structure as much as its indolent diction. Saturday Night is not a lonely specimen of street life but a bold push at the borders of meaning and memory." Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater received several awards including the Pushcart Prize for poetry and later, the fiction award given by the Association for Asian American Studies.

Both parents were school teachers, although her father later became a taxidermist. Following in her parents' footsteps, she followed a path into education: In 1983, she received a Bachelor’s Degree, and in 1987 her Master's Degree, both in Education at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Lois-Ann Yamanaka (born September 7, 1961) is an American poet and novelist from Hawaiʻi. Many of her literary works are written in Hawaiian Pidgin, and some of her writing has dealt with controversial ethnic issues. In particular, her works confront themes of Asian American families and the local culture of Hawaiʻi.

Lois-Ann Yamanaka was born September 7, 1961 in Hoʻolehua on the island of Molokaʻi, Hawaiʻi. Yamanaka's parents, Harry and Jean Yamanaka, raised her and her four younger sisters in the sugarcane plantation town of Pahala on Hawaiʻi Island.