2023-07-13
In Hawai‘i, girls and women fight to find their identities amid conflicting cultures in stories touched with magical realism.
The female protagonists of these stories range in age from preteen to 70, and all are of Hawaiian or mixed heritage. They struggle with gender issues and motherhood, with food and body image, and they find it difficult to bridge the demands of multiple cultures, to reconcile the traditions of Hawai‘i with the chaos of modern America. Often, traditional legends of ancestral warriors and mythical creatures spring to life amid the everyday. In the title story, 12-year-old Sadie is grappling with the onset of her first period and her family’s insistence that she learn about precolonial Hawai‘i: “She learns too much about her culture, things she wishes to unknow.” Is the ban on carrying pork with you (even leftovers in Tupperware) as you travel a certain road just a superstition or a real curse, one that manifests years later in a nightmarish pregnancy? In “Story of Men,” the frazzled mother of six kids buys a used clothes dryer and finds inside it a Menehune, a magical being that might be something like a cuddly elf or might be a primeval avenger. Whatever it is, this one takes over the household, with surprising results. In “Temporary Dwellers,” a teen narrates a story that takes place in a world where the island of Kaua‘i is being bombed for military training. A refugee from the bombings, an angry girl about her age, moves in with the narrator and her mother on another island. Both the newcomer and the situation in Kaua‘i are wreathed in mystery, and the narrator becomes obsessed. “Ms. Amelia’s Salon for Women in Charge” is a surreal take on cultural notions of female beauty in which a Hawaiian woman with a blond haole boyfriend visits a place where having her pubic hair waxed is paid for with an ominous “trait exchange.” In “Aiko, the Writer,” the title character, whose manuscript for a book about the legendary Night Marchers is doing things manuscripts don’t usually do, is advised by her dead grandmother, in the form of a gecko: “There are ways to tell Hawaiian stories and ways to make Hawaiian stories vulnerable to the white hand. You’ll need to be extremely careful with your choices.” Those choices animate these absorbing stories.
Magical events illuminate the all-too-real problems of Hawaiian women in an impressive story collection.
The contemporary Hawaii of Kakimoto's debut is neither idyllic backdrop nor tragic fable; the stories evoke the land and its intermixing cultures in all their anxiety, claustrophobia and restlessness . . . Weaving Hawaiian words into English ones, Kakimoto positions language as a tether to our most ancient and eternal selves . . . Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare is rich and wise, humming with confidence in the knowledge of a particular community's lovely, miserable ways.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Megan Kamalei Kakimoto is a short story writer that all other short story writers should study. She has the ability to captivate readers with a single sentence. Her prose bursts with exquisite confidence that makes it hard to believe this is a debut collection. Every Drop is a frontrunner for Book of the Year.” —Debutiful
“The world desperately needs more Hawaiian voices in literature (and everywhere!), and Megan Kamalei Kakimoto's debut collection is a brave and atmospheric addition. Reflective and bold, the stories take on the violence of colonization while celebrating Hawaiian identity and womanhood.” —Ms. Magazine
“Kakimoto's debut collection tells 11 stories of contemporary Hawaiian identity, mythology, and womanhood. Unruly sexuality, generational memory, and the ghosts of colonization collide in what promises to be an auspicious short-fiction debut.” —The Millions, Most Anticipated
“Modernity and mythology collide in this haunting and entrancing story collection by an exciting new voice in fiction.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
“This debut story collection, set in contemporary Hawai'i, is both a luscious ode to native Hawaiian women and a ferocious report from an occupied territory full of tension and rage.” —Bustle
“Kakimoto's collection reads like a glass of water filled to the brim . . . An obvious master of the sentence . . . Her lines cross time and space, building an entire world in just a few moments . . . Always, the question of what it means to live as a Native Hawaiian woman in an illegally occupied territory roils beneath the surface of Kakimoto's stories . . . With this debut collection, Kakimoto makes herself a household name not just when it comes to the literature of Hawai'i, but proves herself to be one of the best short story writers writing right now.” —The Common
“Alive and haunted by possibility, full of characters in slippery relationships. The body horror and ghostly spirits throughout aren't grisly. There's a softness to them, much like those whispered warnings of the opening. It's beautifully constructed from start to finish, and while the stories will get under your skin, it's a welcome invasion.” —Autostraddle
“These lightly speculative stories about girls and women in Hawaii are immersive and haunting in all the best ways, and they'll stick with you after reading it just as much as the gorgeous cover.” —Book Riot, The Best Book Covers of 2023
“Kakimoto interweaves themes of sexual desire and fertility with Hawaiian mythology in her unflinching debut collection . . . Marked by a wry sense of humor and an unerring touch for the surreal, Kakimoto's stories add up to a powerful exploration of gender, class, race, colonialism, and domestic violence. This eloquent outing marks Kakimoto as a writer to watch.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“All things weird, wonderful, mysterious, and mythical collide in this excellent debut story collection. Focused on mixed native Hawaiian and Japanese women and ensconced in Hawaiian history and lore, each story explores what it means to be a woman, but especially a woman of color . . . This great book signals the arrival of a very talented writer.” —Booklist, starred review
“It would be fitting but too simple to call this collection haunting. The stories in Megan Kamalei Kakimoto's Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare are so lavishly imagined, and their characters-from young women to mythical beings to watchful ancestors and even Hawaii itself-are so defiant, that to offer any solid definitions seems like a betrayal of the book's ethics. Here, boundaries between the past and present, the living and the dead, are not so much flimsy as nonexistent . . . Even after one closes the book, the power of these stories remains.” —Washington Independent Review of Books
“Absorbing . . . Magical events illuminate the all-too-real problems of Hawaiian women in an impressive story collection.” —Kirkus Reviews
“The collection's visceral stories chronicle intense moments in the lives of Hawaiian girls and women dealing with adolescence, body image issues, mental health, and motherhood . . . The tales unfold within a landscape of deeply held traditions, myths, and superstitions from multiple cultures.” —Publishers Weekly, Writers to Watch Fall 2023
“Megan Kamalei Kakimoto's debut story collection is a knockout. In these stories, all set in Hawaii, Kakimoto explores sexuality, womanhood, coming-of-age, colonialism, class, and identity, alongside Hawaiian folklore and superstitions. Funny and surreal, beautiful and unflinching, this is a collection that's worth savoring.” —Powell's Best Fiction 2023
“Megan Kamalei Kakimoto builds a contemporary portrait of an ever-changing Hawaii in this debut collection-excavating gender, race, sexuality, and the very act of storytelling.” —Electric Lit, Best Short Story Collections of 2023
“I love every story in Megan Kamalei Kakimoto's spectacular debut, Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare. It's one of those rare and exhilarating collections where each of the eleven stories is a stand-alone gem, but, read as a whole, builds an immersive and unforgettable world-a contemporary portrait of an ever-changing Hawaii.” —Molly Antopol, Electric Literature
“Reading it, I found stories of Native Hawaiian and Japanese women who struggle with their loved ones, their identity, even their own bodies. Stories filled with magical images, and even ghosts. It's a hypnotic, occasionally disturbing, and beautifully written read.” —Deepa Fernandes, NPR's "Here and Now"
“This collection of short stories was a revelation. It taught me that beautiful language lurks in places as macabre as the subconscious realm of the Night Marchers and as mundane as the waiting room of a pornography production company. This book inspired me to examine my own choice of words and to endeavor to drop something exquisite in a squalid alley of a chapter.” —Scott Kikkawa, author of CHAR SIU, in Honolulu Magazine
“When it comes to fiction, it's often said that a story is only good if specific moments are unforgettable. In her debut, Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare, Megan Kamalei Kakimoto is an unforgettable moment factory, assembling indelible scenes with line craft that is precise and candid, but also brimming with emotion. These short stories, most of which are set in Hawai'i, could very well be taught and treasured for years to come.” —Chris McKinney, author of SUNSET, WATER, CITY, in Honolulu Magazine
“Kakimoto doesn't shy away from anything: instead, she plunges into the uncomfortable. Her storytelling exposes the subtle and overt consequences of colonialism on Native Hawaiians, examines the intersectionality of womanhood for women of color and reminds us how actions of the past haunt the present.” —Good Times
“Kakimoto has written a singular collection of diverse stories illustrating the lives of Hawaiian women and girls of different backgrounds. These tales are speculative and occasionally grotesque, including graphic descriptions of bodily functions and mythical creatures emerging from dark crevices, but always sympathetic toward the characters…This collection is a beautifully written and insightful look at what it means to be a Hawaiian local, with an emphasis on the female experience.” —Niv Magazine
“In EVERY DROP IS A MAN'S NIGHTMARE, the enormously talented Megan Kakimoto gives us her Hawai'i, as bright as blood, as dark as blood: full of muscle and bone, sex, the body, corpse flowers, Night Marchers, the occasional Elvis impersonator. It's a book about beauty and brutality, love and threat, home and estrangement, as original and fearless a book as I've read in years. It does not pull its punches; it's altogether a knockout. Eleven knockouts, one KO for every story.” —Elizabeth McCracken, author of THE SOUVENIR MUSEUM
“Megan Kamelei Kakimoto's collection blooms with opulent and tender language. She weaves an intimate and expansive worldview of Hawai'i as sacred, abundant, and thoroughly alive with ancestral stories. Kakimoto is one of Hawai'i's most brilliant new voices. The power of her monumental debut will reverberate across generations past and those yet to come.” —Joseph Han, author of NUCLEAR FAMILY
“Lyrical collisions of superstition, folktales, and modern Hawaiian culture saving itself in the face of cliches. Desire and confusion are rarely far apart in these powerful coming-of-age stories that prove 'it is possible to be many things, all the time, all at once.” —Amy Hempel, author of THE COLLECTED STORIES and SING TO IT
“Megan Kakimoto is an extraordinary writer-compassionate, insightful, fiercely funny and super-smart-and Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare thrums with intelligence, wisdom and wild originality. A tremendous debut by a writer who, lucky for us, has only just begun.” —Molly Antopol, author of THE UNAMERICANS
“A writer receives a stern warning from a familial spirit. A widow forms a relationship with a corpse flower. A flailing mother copes by telling her son tales about The Madwoman in the Sea. Kakimoto's bold and haunting stories are brilliant on the mysterious and potent languages of the body, and on the enduring power of the stories that shape us. EVERY DROP IS A MAN'S NIGHTMARE is a stunning debut.” —Laura van den Berg, author of I HOLD A WOLF BY THE EARS and THE THIRD HOTEL
“EVERY DROP IS A MAN'S NIGHTMARE is a sensory and visceral exploration of womanhood and Hawaiian culture, both ancient and new. In a collection where history and the present touch, the prose reads as if each sentence is reaching into turquoise waters and pulling out glimmering shells of truth. Megan Kamalei Kakimoto's debut throbs with searing talent.” —Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of WOMAN OF LIGHT and SABRINA & CORINA
“Megan Kakimoto is one of those rare writers who has mastered both story and sentence. 'The Love and Decline of the Corpse Flower'-thick with grief, desire, and magic-teems with deft lyricism and poetic attention. The women in this story are audacious, resilient, and unforgettable-they have my whole heart.” —Kimberly King Parsons, author of BLACK LIGHT
“Told with sharp, lurid prose, Megan Kamalei Kakimoto's stories of kanaka women put female agency, rage, and horror at the forefront, deftly interrogating the ways in which identity and inheritance can both haunt and liberate. An extraordinary debut collection that is as exquisite as it is terrifying.” —Jenny Tinghui Zhang, author of FOUR TREASURES OF THE SKY
“These nervy, original stories are flat-out wonderful-a stellar debut.” —Hilma Wolitzer, author of TODAY A WOMAN WENT MAD IN THE SUPERMARKET
“In EVERY DROP IS A MAN'S NIGHTMARE, Megan Kamalei Kakimoto explores with visceral precision the pains and the joys of the body. Shame and grief intermingle with tenderness and desire in these multilayered stories. This is an innovative, spectacular debut.” —Helen Phillips, author of THE NEED
“In lush, gorgeous prose that startles and stirs, Kakimoto weaves eleven visceral and surreal stories about the body and desire, blood and inheritance, Hawaiian mythology and identity. A wholly original debut, EVERY DROP IS A MAN'S NIGHTMARE is everything I want in a collection: daring, big-hearted, electric, lyrical, and utterly unforgettable. In the opening story, a mother asks her daughter, 'My baby honey girl, don't you want to live?' This book is a resounding yes, all the fierce and relentless ways that these girls and women fight to live-and the ways they keep each other alive. We are lucky to live in the time of Megan Kamalei Kakimoto.” —Marisa Crane, author of I KEEP MY EXOSKELETONS TO MYSELF
