Wild meat and the bully burgers

In her exuberant first novel, Lois-Ann Yamanaka tells the story of young Lovey Nariyoshi in Hilo, Hawai'i, on the big island of Hawai'i. Lovey's best friend is effeminate and endearing; her father at once loving and brutal; and her entire family is caught in a cultural gap between East and West.

Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers embraces an array of familial issues as Lovey forges an identity of her own in a world where Japanese-Americans find no facsimile of themselves in pop culture or media, no trace of their inner lives in the stories they read, and where the unpalatable is served on a plate of uncertainty.

At once a bitingly funny satire of "white" happiness and a moving meditation on what is real, ugly at times, but true, Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers crackles with the language of pidgin - Hawaiian Creole - distinguishing one of the most vibrant new voices in contemporary culture.