Hammajang Luck

 

Rating: 4 for making up a new category: mahudystopianfuturism (ish)

My Thoughts:

I am going to make up a new "genre" or category for this book based on the title "Hammajang." Anyone outside of Hawaiʻi will not know/understand "hammajang" in the same way that the shaka or aloha is both international and Hawaiʻi-centric at the same time. Hammajang is an old school plantation pidgen term for "messed up," "kapakahi," chaotic. So right away, this title, by writer Makana Yamamoto (Hawaiian first name, Japanese last name) identifies as local literature, perhaps by a local writer. Indeed, they are from Maui, but if you look at the author picture, they look less Hawaiian than perhaps hapa haole/kepani. So local adjacent?

Then there is the setting. This book is touted as a mix of Ocean's 8 and Blade Runner. In other words, this is an all female heist book with the two main characters in a love hate love queer relationship. It is also like Blade Runner because of the man made world in space where even the daylight is manufactured. No androids, but it is a seedy urban setting where the few are uber rich and the majority are generationally poor. 

I wanted to call this Hawaiian futurism, but this is definitely not Hawaiʻi. Any kind of novel labeled as Hawaiʻi has to both be in Hawaiʻi, but in addition, the ʻāina should have its own chracteristics, its own role as a character in the novel. This is not that. They have more plantation values where families continue to be colonized by the big luna and really, no one gets out of that system through legal means.

Also, the definition for Afro futurism does include science fiction locales and Africans in a diaspora that also can include space stations and other planets, but it usually shows a future where Africans thrive, not get stuck in the same struggle to just survive. So maybe this is not a futurism as I originally thought.

This has nothing to do with the story. I liked the story. I always like a good heist adventure, even with an angry butchy Edie. She is more complicated than just being angry and bitter. What works with this book is that the characters have kuleana. That is why I am trying to label this. This is a queer story, in a colonized future that feels like Honolulu now. Perhaps this is a mahudystopianfuturism. 

Whatever this is called, it will be a familiar story to our high school students looking for queer science fiction, heist fiction and small kine pidgen and local food moʻolelo.

From the Publisher:

Edie is done with crime. Eight years behind bars changes a person—costs them too much time with too many of the people who need them most.

And it’s all Angel’s fault. She sold Edie out in what should have been the greatest moment of their lives. Instead, Edie was shipped off to the icy prison planet spinning far below the soaring skybridges and neon catacombs of Kepler space station—of home—to spend the best part of a decade alone.

But then a chance for early parole appears out of nowhere and Edie steps into the pallid sunlight to find none other than Angel waiting—and she has an offer.

One last job. One last deal. One last target. The trillionaire tech god they failed to bring down last time. There’s just one thing Edie needs to do—trust Angel again—which also happens to be the last thing Edie wants to do. What could possibly go all hammajang about this plan?

Publication Information:

Author: Makana Yamamoto
Publisher: Harper Voyager (January 14, 2025)
Print length: 356 pages
High school