Kauai author Dawn Fraser Kawahara will be signing her book, “Jackals’ Wedding—A Memoir of a Childhood in British India,” in a meet-the-author event at The Bookstore in Hanapepe, 3785 Hanapepe Road from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, June 6 during
Kauai author Dawn Fraser Kawahara will be signing her book, “Jackals’ Wedding—A Memoir of a Childhood in British India,” in a meet-the-author event at The Bookstore in Hanapepe, 3785 Hanapepe Road from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, June 6 during the Hanapepe Town popular Art Night.
Kawahara, an award-winning writer, publisher and The Garden Island columnist, has been a strong supporter of literary and cultural arts on Kauai for years.
“If I could take time to sit with each of my readers – some of who have become true fans and are awaiting the publication of my second memoir, I would have a lengthy backstory to relate,” Kawahara said.
When author Dawn Fraser Kawahara arrived on Kauai in the spring of 1983 under a different married name, she made a commitment to make this island her new home. She saw it as the perfect place to live the life she wanted, where she would complete the book she had begun writing.
She made the move in the fall of 1984, and set about establishing an outdoor learning camp for children, “Kauai Loves Kids.” A series of unforeseen obstacles prevented this business plan from continuing. She let that experiment go and landed a job in the subscription department of The Garden Island newspaper while freelancing articles. Soon, she joined the editorial staff, wrote features and edited “Lively Arts,” ohana, health and history sections of the paper. She was interviewing, writing, editing, and laying out pages on a daily basis.
“I was written-out at the end of the day, too weary to work on my book,” Kawahara said, while quick to add, “However, I believe working for The Garden Island gave me the best introduction anyone could ever have to people in the Kauai community and the host culture.”
Years later, she dusted off the book project and began work on it. Her husband Delano Kawahara, whom she married in 1992, convinced Dawn after his retirement that they needed to travel back to India to gain the insight she needed to complete the manuscript.
In the fall of 2000, the Kawaharas flew to Delhi to join a tour through the “Heart of India,” enjoying travels throughout Rajasthan, then on to Varanasi and Nepal. At the tour’s end, they traveled independently back to Dawn’s childhood home in the foothills of the Himalayas north of Delhi. Kawahara was able to turn back the years to her early childhood when India was part of the colonial empire of Britain. Memories — and stories, present running parallel with past — began to flow and solidify. These were captured in her first, award-winning memoir, “Jackals’ Wedding, A Memoir of a Childhood in British India.”
Kawahara went on to write, edit and publish further books. She established her own small press, TropicBird Press, and learned the ropes of publishing and distribution hands-on.
Meanwhile, the Kawaharas continued to travel and trace Dawn’s life threads. In 2004, they visited the Golden Triangle between Thailand, Laos and Burma, and took a day trip into Burma.
“We still didn’t trust the military regime that was strongly in place then,” Dawn said.
In 2007, they returned to South India with Roselle Bailey’s Ka `Imi Institute cultural exchange tour, visiting schools and colleges, villages and temples. The writer’s maternal grandparents had been born in Goa and in Kerala, and courted in Bangalore. The Kawaharas traveled independently to that Karnataka city to find past family homes, schools, churches and landmarks mentioned in family documents and letters. They traced doctors in the family, and an orphan great-grandmother with a misleading French name. Further family secrets were uncovered for the family archives — and to be written into Memoir II, which will cover Dawn’s Burma and Australia days. The spring of 2013 found the Kawaharas attending a Fraser family reunion in the Sydney area. By meeting and talking with relatives and family contacts, they were able to ferret out more clues around the March 1948 disappearance of Dawn’s father William Fraser from Australia.
“One of those clues leads us right back to Burma,” Kawahara said, “to Maymyo, where my father was born, and where both my parents grew up.”
This year it will be back to Burma for Dawn with her husband, so she can complete the writing currently in place for Burma Bill, The Echoes of the Lie. Kawaharas Memoir II is slated for publication through her TropicBird Press with AuthorHouse, “before the year turns, I’m hoping,” she said.
Info: (808) 335-6469 or www.kauaiweddingsandbooks.com
