After one collaboration, two volumes of poetry, and a memoir, Garrett Hongo is an established voice in Asian American literature. His postmodern style variously utilizes different techniques, voices, sources, and forms. Hongo is more concerned with exploring and voicing his personal experience and the collective experience of Japanese Americans than he is with adhering closely…
Tag: What For
What For by Garrett Kaoru Hongo: Summary
Stanza 1 The speaker of ‘‘What For’’ recalls the things he loved and looked forward to when he was six years old. In the first stanza, he describes his childhood sense of magic: a few Hawaiian words had the power to make it rain and sang through the nautilus like the sound of the sea….