Woman. Warrior. Writer.
Jasmin Iolani Hakes Vol. 4 No. 8 July 5, 2023
Meet Woman. Warrior. Writer. Jasmin Iolani Hakes!
How did you come to author your life?
Many things brought me to writing, but I think the primary one was a series of traumatic events that left me feeling like I was standing outside the world looking in through the window. After years of struggling with extreme poverty, food and housing insecurity, and my stepfather’s sudden death, I wanted to be more than a victim of my circumstances, more than a bag of unresolved issues and pain. When I started trying to find words for feelings and events I realized that was how my body processed. If I could capture something within a sentence, I could deal with it.
The best advice I ever received was write what scares you. What makes your hands tremble. When I first started writing, I wrote how I thought I was supposed to. It wasn’t until I let that go and focused on writing what resonated within me that it started to get attention. And don’t be afraid to write messy – it’s a lot easier to move the furniture in the room when it’s all laid out in front of you.
Jasmin Iolani Hakes was born in Hilo, Hawaiʻi. Her work has been published in the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times and is the recipient of a 2018 Hedgebrook fellowship. HULA is her first novel. You can learn more at http://www.jasminiolani.com
twitter@iolanidancing IG @jasminiolani
TEACHING and WORKSHOP
Intersectionality: Manuscript Workshop runs September 06-November 8 WEDNESDAYS 5-7AM HST for 10 weeks. This workshop is for those working on a specific manuscript project. Instructor permission only. Limited enrollment.
NEWS and OPPORTUNITIES
Met up with Sujatha Raman (WCWW)! Her work is forthcoming in Common Unity: An Anthology. Congrats, Sujatha
I was Darien Hsu Gee’s plus 1 for a Deepak Chopra talk! So fun to see her in Darien in real life, which to me, was as meaningful and significant as seeing Chopra. I took it all in as the stars aligning…I did Chopra’s 21 days of abundance meditation during COVID and it was foundational to getting drstephaniehan.com off the ground. Meditation rewires the brain.
Ahran Lee (Asian/Asian Am WCWW) provides customized experiences for BIPOC folks, aka global majority folks, in a co-created coaching space. She supports them as they explore their internalized oppression and reclaim their inherent power and authentic selves.
Ahran worked with me to facilitate workshops on writing your divorce story. I highly recommend her work. She has the gift of noonchi – a Korean word that roughly translates into the ability to read and understand a room or person on a deep, almost instinctual level.
Going to Korea Peace Action: National Mobilization to end the Korean War in Washington D.C. on July 26/27? Let’s connect. I’m reporting on the Hawai’i contingent including Christine Ahn, head of Woman Cross DMZ. Learn more by watching CROSSINGS on July 23 7PM PT.
Musicians: If you have 45 seconds of instrumental music on Spotify, and would like your work aired on Hawai’i Public Radio, please submit to shan@hawaiipublicradio.org
Syllabus Authors/Guest Writers/Workshop Alum, send your writing news/links for inclusion in the next WWW newsletter!
Highlights from HPR’s The Conversation:
China and Russia: 400 Years of Conflict and Concord is a deeply significant work by the historian Philip Snow. Read it for global context—this is the ONLY book around that puts this relationship into a long historical context.
Sophia Kaʻawa-Aweau’s commencement speech was phenomenal. It went viral. Check out my interview and watch her speech.
MERCH
Tote your beach or writing stuff around with this bag. Proceeds support the Woman. Warrior. Writer. scholarship fund! This fall I would like to provide scholarships for women to attend Master Narratives and BREAK: How to Write Your Divorce Story.
Writing Tip
What is it that you really want to say? Meaning, not a synopsis. Can you write in one sentence the single idea that you would like to deliver? Now take a look at your story. How do the two connect? Remember that a story must entertain…
Let’s take World Peace Now as a message…You start writing about all the reasons people need peace and why it matters. BUT Stop. Stop. Stop. You gotta find the story in this. Figure out the connection and even the conflict between your story and your message. Write into the space of unknowing.The message is almost always about something that lives within you internally and the conflict becomes delivering what you think you want to say, versus what really lives inside of you. Seek to enter the flow state. This is where you will discover your message and story.
Aloha,
Stephanie