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Amy Lillian Manning
Lum, Darrell H. Y. (1950– )
Lum was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he
currently lives with his family. His father, born in
China, came to Hawaii at the age of six; his pater-
nal grandfather, a former provincial government
official in China and Chinese language teacher in
Hawaii, maintained a lifelong interest in writing
despite having to take on diverse jobs to support
his family. Lum’s maternal grandmother, on the
other hand, moved to Hawaii as an infant and
married a Chinese rice-mill manager. After grad-
uating from McKinley High School in 1968, Lum
left Hawaii to study engineering at Case Institute
of Technology in Cleveland. After his freshman
year, however, he transferred to the University of
Hawaii at Manoa, where he studied creative writ-
ing and graphic design. In May 1972 he gradu-
ated with a B.A. in liberal studies and went on to
earn a master’s degree in educational communi-
cations and technology in 1976. One year later he
obtained a Ph.D. in educational foundations from
the same university. From 1974 he has worked as
an academic adviser at the University of Hawaii
Student Support Services.
Lum has written plays, children’s books and
short stories in which he brings to life the language
and mixed heritage of the Hawaiian islands. He
cofounded and is coeditor with Eric Chock of the
literary magazine Bamboo Ridge, a nonprofit aca-
demic press promoting Hawaiian literature. In the
preface to The Quietest Singing, a literary anthol-
ogy he coedited with Joseph Stanton and Estelle
Enoki, he affirms his personal commitment as a
writer when he discusses “the responsibility to lis-
ten to the land, to the people, to all the voices” (2).
As he writes about the varied island cultures, the
themes of poverty and discrimination forcefully
emerge, reflecting the dark side of an island para-
dise. Critic Gail Okawa argues that Lum’s choice
of subjects, language, and form serves a means of
resistance to the dominant society’s attitude to-
wards the multiethnic population of Hawaii and
its culture (179).
Many of his plays—Oranges Are Lucky, Fight-
ing Fire, A Little Bit Like You, My Home Is Down
the Street, and Magic Mango—are popular in the
islands and have been produced by theatrical com-
panies such as Kumu Kahua and Honolulu The-
ater for Youth. His children’s books, dealing with
the diversity of Asian heritage palpable in Hawai-
ian life, include The Golden Slipper: A Vietnamese
Legend, Hot-Pepper Kid and Iron-Mouth Chicken
Capture Fire and Wind, The Rice Mystery, and Rid-
ing the Bullet.
Lum has published two short-story collections,
Sun: Short Stories and Drama (1980) and Pass On,
No Pass Back (1990). The protagonists of these
stories, very often children or adolescents, nar-
rate events in the “language of home” (pidgin),
creating a humorous and realistic tone. In addi-
tion to the stories in these books, his stories have
appeared in publications such as Manoa, Bamboo
Ridge, Seattle Review, Chaminade Literary Review,
and Hawaii Review; some of them have also been
reprinted in Charlie Chan Is Dead and The Qui-
etest Singing (2004), both anthologies of contem-
porary Asian-American literature. In the latter,
he presents three short stories that form a cycle
about a father-son relationship. Lum’s consistent
use of short-story cycles emerges from what he
deems natural to the island culture characterized
by a tradition “of storytelling, of story-making, of
retelling stories, of playing with language—a tre-
mendous verbal fluency and expressiveness” (qtd.
in Okawa 182).
Lum has received various literary awards in-
cluding the 1991 Elliot Cades Award and the 1992
Outstanding Book Award in fiction from the As-
sociation for Asian American Studies. Well known
and respected in the Hawaiian islands, his work
has become of major interest to mainland readers
and scholars.178 Lum, Darrell H. Y.