Gary Pak


Gary Pak is a writer, editor and professor of English at University of Hawaii. Pak has been noted as one of the most important Asian Hawaiian writers.

Biography

Gary Pak was born and raised in Hawaii. Pak graduated from Boston University with a BA and from University of Hawaii with an MA and a PhD. Growing up in Hawaii, Pak said his first language is Pidgin English. "My culture is from Hawaii; my parents’ and grandparents’ generations helped create that culture", he said during an interview with the Magazine of the University of Hawaii.
Some of Pak's novels are based on the true stories from his family. His grandparents fled from Korea during World War II and came to the United States; in 1905, his grandmother worked on a sugarcane plantation at Hawaii. His novel A Ricepaper Airplane is based on an incident related with his mum in the setting of a sugarcane plantation. In his short story collection Language of the Geckos and Other Stories, Pak's memorable portraits of Hawai'i's Korean Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Native Hawaiians increases cross-cultural understanding of Hawaiian life and culture.
Pak was also the producer, play writer and editor of the Olelo Community TV series, Plantation Children: 2nd-generation Koreans in Hawai'i.
Pak was a recipient of Fulbright Fellow.

Selected works

Short stories