Winner of the Digging Press Chapbook Series Award, 2018

A Best Dressed selection at The Wardrobe, Sundress Publications, 2020

Mandy-Suzanne Wong deftly explores the complex world of the ama — ocean women, mostly elderly, who eke out a living while diving deep to capture abalone, snails, and otherworldly sea creatures for food. Unlike the men of the fictional village of Kaiyono who fish from boats, the ama battle the cold currents without scuba tanks or snorkels. They do this while facing the threat of an ecological crisis they had no hand in causing. Suffused with lyrical imagery and profound longing, Mandy-Suzanne Wong creates evocative moments of love, pride, jealousy, misunderstanding, and sacrifice in this duet of short stories.

Praise for Awabi

A short, deep dive into the hearts and minds of the extraordinary ama women, devoted predator-protectors whose ocean livelihood the same thing as being a good sister, mother, or daughter. Crafted with unsentimental, elegant prose, Wong has written a moving tribute to a dying of a way of life.

— Karen Quevillon, author of The Parasol Flower

This story speaks to all mothers and daughters even as it tells of a small, and smaller group of ama, ocean women. Mothers worry about what to tell their daughters even as they want their daughters to continue in the traditions that have made the mothers strong, but with changing modernity and environmental degradation, mothers often have to counsel their daughters for survival. Even as oftentimes, the degradations are not caused by the women’s practices but by the larger, powerful business and capitalist culture. As so often happens, when something starts to disappear, it becomes quaint and people want to experience it, or own it, or subdue it even in its death throes … Beautifully written with immediacy and clarity that makes the reader feel as though they are underwater with lungs about to explode, “…breaking the surface with a gasp like a cry of pain.” … “The fighting urge to breathe” is an ongoing exertion for women.

— Ann Graham, author of Ready, Set, Go Write

Awabi

A Duet of Short Stories

ISBN 9781733603805, Digging Press, 3 April 2019 (First Edition), 30 May 2022 (Second Edition).