“A stunning family saga narrated from within the walls of Halawa Prison.” — The New York Times “A book about ‘the sins of the fathers’ . . . A gritty, troubling book.” — The Honolulu Advertiser “The other Hawai’i, the one tourists never get to see.” —Ian MacMillan Ken Hideyoshi is the new guy in Halawa Correctional Institute. He’s tough looking, a hard case, observes his cellmate Cal—the mute tattoo artist of the prison, a wife murderer. SYN, a gang symbol, is tattooed on his hand, and he has a Japanese emblem inscribed on his left shoulder. He asks Cal for a tattoo on his back, in kanji script, of Musashi’s Book of the Void. While he is being worked on, he tells Cal his life story, a tale of hardship and abuse. Motherless, he was raised by a distant father, a Vietnam War veteran, in the impoverished hinterlands. In his teen years he hung out with the native Hawaiian gangs and was drawn into the Hawaiian-Korean underworld of strip bars and massage parlors. His ambition and proud samurai spirit seem, inevitably, to lead to his downfall. Chris McKinney is of Korean, Japanese, and Scottish descent. He was born in Honolulu and grew up in Kahaluu. He portrays the native Hawaiian experience from the inside, where children of mixed ethnicity grow up far from the clear water and pristine beaches of the rich visitors’ resorts. Adult/High School—This is the story of one prisoner's life told to another. The listener is Cal, a white, onetime racist tattoo artist who lost his voice when his throat was cut in a prison fight. He is serving a long sentence on one of the Hawaiian Islands. Over the years, he has become the kind of man other prisoners feel safe talking to—partly because he can't repeat what they say, but also because they trust the sense of peace he has found in his own silence and the time he has served. Cal's new cellmate is Ken, a Japanese man raised in Hawaii-and an outsider like Cal. He has Cal give him a large, symbolic tattoo on his back as he tells his rich though troubled tale. Ken recounts his childhood friendship with a doomed, modern-day Hawaiian prince and the decaying world he ruled. He found himself the muscle man for a bar-owning, prostitution-ring-running, loan-sharking Korean woman. Falling in love with her daughter was just one of the reasons that he ended up behind bars. Teens will appreciate the many deep, complicated relationships. The language and realities are rough, but there is much compassion and wisdom to balance them.— Will Marston, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Chris McKinney is the author of The Tattoo and Bolohead Row . He is of Korean, Japanese, and Scottish descent. Born in Honolulu and raised in Kahaluu, he portrays the native Hawaiian experience from the inside, where children of mixed ethnicity grow up far from the clear water and pristine beaches of the rich visitors' resorts. He received both his BA and MA in English from the University of Hawaii and currently teaches at Honolulu Community College. The Tattoo By Chris McKinney Soho Press, Inc. Copyright © 1999 Mutual Publishing Company All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-56947-450-1 Contents Prologue LOCKDOWN BY MIDNIGHT, Chapter One THE GROUND BOOK, Chapter Two KOA, Chapter Three LOOKING AT MUSASHI, Chapter Four SUPERNOVA, Epilogue THE LAST RONIN, CHAPTER 1 "I'm nobody's child, I'm nobody's child, Just like a flower, I'm growing wild. No mama's kisses, and no daddy's smiles, nobody wants me, I'm nobody's child." Nobody's Child Kapena THE GROUND BOOK My father told me I was a C-section baby cut out during the summer of sixty-nine. Tripler Hospital. The Year of the Rooster. Like Macduff, I was from my mother's womb untimely ripp'd. I imagine my birth differently. I was not born in some pristine-pink military hospital alongside white and black G.I. babies. The only gook-looking baby in the germ-free nursery. I was delivered in purgatory. A soul not going up or down. Only me. It was a room with walls covered in aged blood. My mother lay unconscious, stirruped in the middle of the room, while my father and the doctor worriedly gazed above her. As the doctor readied himself to make an incision, beads of sweat dripped from his head and fell upon my mother's ripe stomach. As the droplets rolled off my mother's round abdomen, I surprised everyone. Nobody had to cut me out of her peach belly. I am samurai. Momotaro. Not baby out of stomach, but rooster out of egg. I see it now ... I slice my way out of my mother's womb armed with the Hideyoshi family katana. Aiahhh! There's actually a moment when I fence with the doctor's scalpel. Don't cut Ma. Blood gushes out of her. It doesn't stop. A flood. Soon my father and the doctor are waist-deep in her blood. I am armed with my father's sword and armored by my mother's blood. I am not naked. I see my father. He's wearing one of those d