"Dis book stay dedicated to my Faddah, Clarence N. Tonouchi, 1941-2011."

Author-playwright and self-professed "pidgin guerilla" Lee Tonouchi acknowledges the memory of his dad in his latest book, "Significant Moments in da Life of Oriental Faddah and Son: One Hawai‘i Okinawan Journal" (Bess Press, $14.95).

Tonouchi’s mother died when he was just 2 1⁄2, so the writer grew up as an only child dividing his time between his father in Aiea and his mother’s parents in Kaimuki. All of them, plus his paternal grandmother from Maui, were integral in the writer’s development as one of the few Okinawan-American voices in local literary circles.

The new book, Tonouchi’s first collection of poetry, was released this month and is being celebrated with a reading and book signing Wednesday. Many of the poems were previously published in other small-press publications, but "Significant Moments" features new works to enhance the chronological flow.

The collection is filled with the author’s wry, pidgin-inflected attitude and skill at observation that have made him so popular with local readers. The autobiographical touches trace a life growing up in Hawaii in the 1970s, from small-kid time through adulthood.

"It’s about a son trying to deal with his uncommunicative father after his mother’s death, which starts the book," Tonouchi said.

The writer said he regrets that his father, who died in June, didn’t get a chance to see the book published.

"He’d seen a few of the poems before when they originally came out, but I feel sad because of all of the books I’ve written, that’s the one for him," he said.

"It just occurred to me that, ho, now with time and perspective, I understand why people say ‘things happen for a reason,’ no matter how clichéd that sounds. It was through pidgin that I spoke with my Kaimuki grandparents and my grandma on my dad’s side from Maui. She would come to Oahu sometimes to help watch me, starting when I was 12.

"FROM when my mom passed until I was 6, I lived with my grandparents. My dad used to have a funky-kine work schedule. He used to work at the Kaena Point Air Force tracking station most weekends and sometimes weekdays, and sometimes I would stay with him. From 6 up through college, I would at least see my Kaimuki grandparents every weekend, and, in fact, I stayed with them during (University of Hawaii) graduate school time."

When he was with his father, "we would do stuff and then talk about stuff," although that’s fleshed out and better expressed in Tonouchi’s poetry, which recalls times they went to the movies together or worked on school projects.

His Okinawan relatives are also important subjects in his poetry, but it wasn’t until he was in college that he became interested in Okinawan culture.

"They couldn’t teach me Okinawan dance when I was young, because after a few lessons, they said I had such a negative attitude, and later, during my college time, gave up on me after two lessons on the sanshin because I cannot read music. According to my wife, I no mo’ riddim."

Tonouchi hopes his poetry collection will become part of a growing body of work by local Okinawans, who include Jon Shirota, author of the 1988 novel "Lucky Come Hawaii." In a promotional blurb for the new book, Shirota praises Tonouchi for retaining "the spirit of aloha and the Uchinanchu (Okinawan) soul in each of his poems."

"We’ve been linked in with Japanese-American writing, but we know it’s not the same," Tonouchi said. "After Jon’s book I think there’s been a resurgence of Okinawan literature translated into English, like the new collections from the Manoa journal, ‘Living Spirit’ and ‘Voices from Okinawa.’ Maybe this is all part of an overall boon for this kind of writing."