Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

For you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm. This is Michael Silverblatt, and this week my guest is Lois

Anne, Yamanaka. She's the author most recently of Heads by Harry. In fact, this is the third

book of three that have been published by Farah Strauss and Sheru.

The first was Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers.

Then came goose hanging and most recently heads by Harry.

Goas and Yamanaka is a writer who lives in Hawaii,

and it's the experience of growing up on the islands that generates these

three books. Now, as I've read all three, childhood seems like such a natural subject for you

that it's hard to believe that the next book won't be about young people. I mean, isn't that, I mean,

the book seems so free and so joyful. Isn't it going to be hard to take on a new area?

I think so. But the way that I write and the way I understand myself is that I need a 15-year emotional and psychic distance from anything that I need to write about.

So my first book, I was 27 when I went back to school.

I started the collection of poetry Saturday night at the Pahala Theater.

And my persona is 12 years old.

I was 27. And then I write Wild Meat and the Bullie Burgers. I'm about 28, 29, so my narrator becomes 13 and 14. I think I'm

working my way and catching myself up a little bit. Now, just so that listeners will know, what are the, what is the ethnic spectrum that this book covers?

Characters come using all kinds of voices and what unites them is the use of a kind of pigeon English.

...