Volcano

Part memoir, part Japanese American family chronicle, part luminous work of natural history, Volcano tells what happened when Hongo returned to his birthplace in Hawai'i, as a young man, to reclaim its dreamlike landscape and his own elusive past. A magnificant evocation of heritage and place.“My favorite kind of book is a poet's first prose work. The poet comes upon a story so large—his life, nature, history—that 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.'" —Nicholas Christopher

“[Volcano] is startlingly dramatic, spiced with scandal, broken hearts, and abandoned children, but Hongo's compelling, candid, and lyrical manner of storytelling is the real draw. He uses his discoveries in Volcano as a springboard for an analysis of his life, from his youth in racially complex L.A. to his entry into the world of literature and his ongoing struggle with that bane of so many creative people, free-floating angst.” —Library Journal

“Volcano is Hongo’s account of his journeys to recover the lost home of his early childhood and excavate a past rooted in history but can ultimately be accessed only in the imagination. He builds this imagination from facts, his family’s oral histories, sensory encounters with the natural world, and introspection. . . . In trying to recreate this lost home, he fosters a sense of self and establishes his stakes in the world.” —The American Poetry ReviewGarrett Hongo attended Pomona College, the University of Michigan, and the University of California at Irvine, where he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in English. He is a professor at the University of Oregon, where he was Director of the Program in Creative Writing from 1989 to 1993. He is the author of two books of poetry, Yellow Light and The River of Heaven. He lives in Eugene, Oregon, with his wife and their two sons.