The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Heads by Harry by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Brian Evenson

Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Heads by Harry. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999. 320 pp. $24.00.

Following the controversial Blu’s Hanging, Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s latest book is centered around a taxidermy shop and the Japanese-American Yagyuu family who owns it. It pursues in often hilarious terms the struggles of Harry, the owner of the shop, as he tries to avoid acknowledging the failures of his daughter Toni (who is also the narrator) and the flamboyant homosexuality of his son Sheldon.
Though couched in a narrative voice closer to standard English, the dialogue of the book is primarily written in an exuberant and honest pidgin, perhaps difficult at first for readers who have not lived in Hawaii. Yamanaka is not afraid to show poverty-stricken life on the Big Island in all its glory, humor, and repulsiveness. Her characters do drugs, have all-night sex, affectionately or not so affectionately insult the hell out of each other, talk slop, hunt pigs, watch samurai movies, hang out with family, struggle through school, adopt a haole, and stuff animals. Yamanaka moves back and forth between violence and humor, showing the human lives struggling with both.
In addition to the strengths of the dialogue, Yamanaka’s descriptions of taxidermy and pig-hunting are exceptionally well done, often visceral, always accurate. Though Yamanaka sometimes opts for easy solutions and at times this novel feels very similar to her other work, the comic qualities of the novel and the care and accuracy with which the dialogue is rendered make the book successful. [Brian Evenson]